


Back to the Future: The Reboot

by futureboy (PokeRowan)



Series: Modern AU!BttF [1]
Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: (Marty/Jennifer being lesbians), 2015 to 1985, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eventual Romance, F/F, F/M, Gen, Genderbending, Time Travel, fem!Doc, fem!Marty - Freeform, trans girl Jennifer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-05-02 19:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5260088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PokeRowan/pseuds/futureboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was never in time for her classes. She was never in time for dinner. Then one day... she wasn't in her time at all.</p><p>Marty McFly, a tomboyish musician, accidentally goes back in time to 1985. With the help of her good friend Doc Brown (albeit a 30 years younger one), she figures out a way to get back to 2015 and spend the night with her best friend/possible future girlfriend under the stars... Only problem is, she's accidentally interfered so that she was never born. Oops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired a little bit by the Ghostbusters reboot, because classic movie reboots with more representation slay me.
> 
> Also, feel free to come annoy me on [tumblr](http://futureboy.tumblr.com/).

The week had been filled with ticking.

Where there was usually the drip of a faucet, or the hiss of a kettle, or the sizzle of a blowtorch, there was now ticking. Clocks covered the entire far wall – squat ones, tall ones, analogue and digital, even a classic Felix the Cat one – and saturated the room with ticking. It was as though it kept time for a countdown to events, like the Brown Estate fire, which had already been and gone. Or perhaps to the news segment on the radio advertising deals on “all 2015 model Toyotas”, which probably included Toyota Tacoma models.

Maybe for the coffee machine, set to automatic, which was lacking a cup; maybe to wake up the laptop on the counter, which began to stream the morning news. “ _...officials at The Pacific Nuclear Research Facility have denied the rumour that the case of missing plutonium was in fact stolen from their vault two weeks ago. A Syrian terrorist group had claimed responsibility for the alleged theft, however--_ ”

An alarm. Burning toast. A buzzer. The mechanical whirr of a complex machine: open can, reposition, pivot. The dog food dispenser. Tin clattered as it met wastepaper basket.

The rattle of the front door was independent of the room’s self-sustained morning routine.

“Hey, Doc?”

A key chimed as it was tossed back underneath the welcome mat.

“Doc?”

Fresh footsteps did not quite align with the consistent ticking; the two different rhythms clashed in the entranceway. “Hello, anybody home?” was called out to nobody, and “Einstein, c’mere boy!” was whistled only to clocks.

Footsteps _nearly_ met dog food, days’ worth overflowing from the bowl: “what’s going o-- oh, _god_.” The pungent smell of processed meat was a completely coincidental distraction to what the skateboard was about to discover under the bed, and something along the lines of _ugh, Jesus, that is disgusting_ masked the bump against a case of plutonium.

A new routine started – polished, like the machines that performed this house’s morning chores, but far from mechanical. This was smooth, all dials and keys and meters. This was slightly dirty fingernails, and a slightly out-of-tune Erlewine Chiquita.

This was an _explosion of sound_ – the speaker sparked and burst, a flurry of papers fluttered through the air, and a shelving unit crammed with books came crashing down. The room itself rumbled, in pain, in indignation, _look at the damn mess you’ve made._

Marty McFly emerged from the rubble.

“Woah.”

She winced as the speaker regurgitated another broken part: “Rock and roll...”

Piercing the air, the telephone tone began to shriek – Marty clambered out from the wreckage of the space under the stairs where a semi-organised room had once been, tripping over amp cables and her own uncooperative feet. Where the hell was the phone? It had been charging on the table just before- oh.

“Yo!” she said, maybe a bit too innocently, yanking the handset out from under a particularly scary pile of equations.

“Marty! Marty, is that you?”

Who else would it be? Jesus. “Hey, hey Doc, where are ya?” Marty asked, pushing her hair from out of her eyes. _Let’s hope to god it’s not on the way back from somewhere._

“Thank god I found you,” came the whispered reply. “Listen, can you meet me at Twin Pines Mall tonight at one fifteen? I've made a major breakthrough, I'll need your assistance.”

Marty’s head was still scrambled from the slight accident with the speaker. “Whurduhuhm,” she started, then, “wait a minute, Doc, one fifteen _in the morning_?”

“Yeah--”

“Doc, what’s going on,” she said, “where’ve you been all week?”

“Working--”

“Where’s Einstein, is he with you?”

“Yeah, he’s right here.”

Well, that explained Dog Food Mountain. “You know, Doc, you left your equipment on all week...”

Doc was none the wiser to the beginning of a frankly fantastic cover up. “My equipment...” The murmur over the phone line crackled with deep thought. “That reminds me, Marty, you better not hook up to the amplifier. There's a _slight_ possibility of overload.”

“Yeah,” she winced, casting a glance over to the chaos she’d left in her wake, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good, I'll see you tonight. Don't forget now! One fifteen A.M., Twin Pines Mall.”

She was about to conclude the conversation in the most casual way imaginable – making it very clear that _everything was a-okay here, the amplifier in question was totally unharmed!_ – when the single worst cacophony of noise imaginable hit Marty’s ears harder than her destructive chord had minutes earlier. “Are those my clocks I hear?!” Doc’s voice excitedly piped up, and honestly, it would be difficult to discern that the noise even _was_ a group of clocks, had it not been for the iconic sound of a cuckoo clock going off as well.

“Yeah,” she shouted, over what was maybe the shittiest percussion section ever put together. “It’s eight o’clock!”

“They’re late! My experiment worked! They’re all exactly twenty five minutes slow!” Doc twittered.

Marty’s heart lurched uncomfortably. “Wait a minute... Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me that it’s eight twenty five?!”

“Precisely!”

Doc evidently hadn’t noticed the tone which was creeping into Marty’s voice. “Damn,” she cursed, more to herself than to the handset: “I’m late for school!”

What followed was yet another instance of a situation known as ‘crap crap I’m late let’s GO already’. She grabbed her skateboard – one with peeling stickers on the bottom, and ‘DAVE’ written on it in faded Sharpie graffiti – and skated through the drive-thru of the Burger King next to the garage that Doc Brown called home. It wasn’t too hard to grab the bumper of a 4x4 and effectively be towed into town, then switch which vehicle she was bumming a ride off every so often. She made sure to wave at the early morning aerobics class, and also at Reverend Crump when he spotted her in his rearview mirror. He rolled his eyes fondly; it was the second time this week.

She was about to dash through the doors of the school, passing by years-old spray paint and scratchings in the wall, when a tall figure in a pink denim jacket came barrelling out from the shadows of the corridor.

“Hey, Jennifer-!”

“Marty, don't go this way, Strickland's looking for you,” Jennifer rushed, “if you're caught it'll be four tardies in a row. I couldn’t text you, my phone’s broken.”

She yanked Marty by the arm towards the fire exit at the side of the school, rushing him past the battered lockers and the history classrooms. Damn Jennifer for using her height advantage to manhandle her. “Alright,” she said, peering around the corner. “I think we’re safe.”

“Y’know,” Marty began, slinging an arm around her shoulders as best as she could, “this time, it wasn’t my fault.” When Jennifer inevitably started to laugh at her excuses, she had to back it with irrefutable evidence (that wasn’t ‘ _you know how we got just a little bit drunk last night? I may have slept through my alarm. Until one o’clock_.’ That one had just been embarrassing). “The Doc set all her clocks twenty five minutes slow--”

“ _Doc_?” shouted Strickland. The grip on the back of Marty’s jacket was vice-like. She didn’t have to glance at Jennifer to know that their expressions were falling in sync. “Am I to understand you're still hanging around with Doctor Emma Brown, McFly?”

Strickland tutted, ripping off yellow slips from his late book with far too much force. Marty let her hand relax on Jennifer’s shoulder. Strickland both frightened and pissed her friend off; maybe, in another time, it would be possible to hold up a conversation with the principal without him being a complete dick.

This, however, was not another time. “Tardy slip for you, Mr. Parker,” he said, earning himself a glare from Marty, and, as she accepted the slip, a discreet middle finger from the girl he’d just addressed as ‘mister’. “And one for you, McFly. I believe that makes four in a row.”

Marty was used to this routine by now – the next step, predictable as ever, would be Strickland taking her by the shoulder in a faux friendly way, trying to build a rapport that he’d demolished years ago. Briefly, she wondered if she’d provoke him into calling her a ‘slacker’ today.

“Now let me give you a nickle's worth of advice, young lady,” he said, walking the two to their classroom as he lectured. “This so-called Doctor Brown is dangerous. She's a real nutcase. You hang around with her you're gonna end up in big trouble.”

 _Oh please,_ Marty thought. _You don’t know jack shit about Doc Brown._ “Oh, yes, sir!” she smirked.

Marty losing her cool did not impress Strickland in the slightest. He pushed Marty’s shoulder, determined to intimidate somehow, but Marty met him dead in the eyes with her own steely stare anyway. “You got a real attitude problem, McFly. You're a slacker.” There it was! Mission accomplished. “You remind me of your father when he went here,” he continued, resentment curling at his lips, “he was a slacker too.”

She felt Jennifer’s hand tighten at her waist. “Can I go now, Mr. Strickland?” she said dangerously, not bothering to wait for a response. The two girls began to lead each other away, but Strickland caught Marty by the shoulder _again_.

It was as though every negative thought he’d come up with regarding her in the last week came spilling out, all at once, voice steadily rising with blatant dislike. “I noticed your band is on the roster for dance auditions after school today.” He was peering from above at her, trying to bring some sort of authority crashing down on their exchange: “why even bother, McFly, you haven't got a chance, you're too much like your old man.”

His face got closer and closer – tiny flecks of spit were now flying out with every syllable. Marty could only narrow her eyes with unbridled fury curdling inside of her as he shouted his closing piece.

“No McFly ever amounted to _anything_ in the history of Hill Valley!”

“Yeah?” Marty challenged quietly. “Well, _history is gonna change_.”

 

* * *

 

“NEXT PLEASE.”

For the last few months or so, Marty had been experimenting with different musical styles. It had begun with an interest in country chords and quickly progressed to folk, swing styles, 50s rock-n-roll... The list went on. It had seemed that every other week Marty was camped out in Doc Brown’s place practicing something new. Her mother had reached the end of her tether once she’d moved on to punk sub-genres, exclaiming that the noise (rather than the copious amounts of vodka) was giving her headaches – after being kicked out of the house every time she’d played, it was decided by a group of friends she went to school with that they could all practice together in Paul’s garage.

“We could form a band,” he’d said. “Robert on drums, me on bass, that girl who plays piano, what’s her name? Lee? Something like that. She could be on keyboard. And you!” Paul had pointed, “you can be our frontman. Frontwoman. Whatever.”

This was how Marty had ended up on stage, at the Battle of the Bands for the school dance, trying to introduce them all without giving it away to an onlooking Jennifer that she was incredibly nervous.

“Alright,” she said, adjusting the mic stand. “We’re The Pinheads.”

Marty’s favourite style – the one she’d been comfortably settled on for at least a month now – was hard rock. It was just so easy to get lost in a good guitar solo. Fingers darting up and down the fretboard, slamming a hand down on the whammy bar at just the right moment... It was possible to forget that anyone was even there. Which was great for Marty, because who the hell ever heard of a self-conscious frontman? Frontwoman? Whatever?

She only came back to reality when someone shut off the power to their instruments. “...Hold it, hold it fellas,” the judge was saying, “I'm sorry, guys. I'm afraid you're just too darn loud.”

“We can be quieter!” Marty protested, exchanging looks and nods with The Pinheads.

The judge had a pitying look on his face that shot streaks of revulsion through her gut. “Miss McFly,” he said. “It’s twenty fifteen, and your band is using an honest-to-God _synthesiser_. Next, please! Where's the next group, please.”

She didn’t have to look at Jennifer’s face to know that all her disappointment would be mirrored there.

“ _Too loud_. I can’t believe it,” she muttered later, as the two of them wandered through town after school, “I'm never gonna get a chance to play in front of _anybody_.” It was tempting to rip down the ‘RE-ELECT MAYOR GOLDIE WILSON’ poster pinned to a tree they were approaching, but that was ultimately a little much even in Marty’s upset state. She settled for swatting at the leaves as they passed.

“Marty, one rejection isn’t the end of the world,” Jennifer said.

She flicked the handful of leaves onto the floor dejectedly. “Nah. I just don’t think I’m cut out for music.”

“But you're good, Marty, you're really good,” she argued, “and the audition demo of yours you sent me is great. You’ve gotta email it to the record company!” When this didn’t seem to be doing any good, she tried a different tactic: “It's like Doc's always saying--”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”

Marty had to wonder why Doc lived in a garage on an estate dominated by chain-companies if that were true, because surely it would be obvious to ‘put her mind’ to inventing something that a) actually functioned and b) sold well.

“That’s good advice, Marty.”

It seemed like a good point to lounge on a park bench instead of loiter waiting for Jennifer’s father to collect her. Both of them were pensive for a few seconds, looking up and down appreciatively at some ladies walking home from the afternoon aerobics class.

“Alright, okay, Jennifer,” Marty started, “What if I send in my demo and they don't like it? I mean, what if they say I'm no good? What if they say, ‘ _get out of here, kid, you got no future_ ’? I just don't think I can take that kind of rejection.” There was a pause as both of them digested that last bit: “Jesus,” she sighed. “I'm beginning to sound like my old man.”

Jennifer giggled. “C'mon, he's not that bad. At least he's letting you borrow the car tomorrow night.”

“Check out that four by four!” Marty exclaimed, completely distracted.

It was jet black, with pristine silver detail and tinted windows – a brand new Toyota Tacoma. Marty helped Jennifer up onto the bench to get a better view of it. “That is hot,” she whistled. “Someday, Jennifer, someday... I’ll save up, for something like that. And you could get your licence, easy. Wouldn't it be great to take that truck up to the lake? Throw a couple of sleeping bags in the back. Lie out under the stars...”

“Stop it, you dreamer,” Jennifer laughed. “You know I can’t get my licence, it’s too hard to change the gender stuff.”

“Yeah, but... someday.”

“...Does your mom know about tomorrow night?” she asked.

 _Does my mom know about tomorrow night? The campout with a beautiful girl where I might or might not decide to ask her on a proper date?  The one that would be me coming out to her and showing her just how_ gay _I am?_

“No, get outta town!” Marty snorted, “my mom thinks I’m going camping with the band. Jam sessions, that sorta crap. Jennifer, my mother would freak out if she thought I was going up there with someone she sees as a  _guy_ , and I get the standard lecture about how she never did that kind of stuff when she was a kid.” It wasn’t either of their faults that Jennifer wasn’t out to the McFly family, but it did make hanging out together difficult – Marty’s brother and sister were fond of teasing her about her ‘boyfriend’, and she was hesitant to genuinely make a move on Jennifer in case her family put her off. “I mean, look,” she shrugged. “I think she was born a nun.”

“She’s just trying to keep you _respectable_ ,” Jennifer smiled, as if Marty having a huge-ass crush on a trans girl was somehow equal to banging a random guy in a tent in the woods. (It wasn’t. This was _Jennifer_.)

“Well,” Marty said, grinning, “she’s not doing a very good job.”

Jennifer agreed with a half-hearted “terrible,” ready to interject with another joke regarding how clueless their parents were about how _not straight or cisgender_ their children were, but she was interrupted by a collection tin rattling near her face.

_“Save the clock tower!”_

A squat lady with a dedication to her cause looked very prepared to convince them to do so: “Maytor Wilson is sponsoring an initiative to replace that clock!” she said, outraged. The clock in question was right behind them – sure enough, it was stuck on four minutes past ten, just as it always had been. “Thirty years ago, lightning struck that clock tower and the clock hasn't run since. We at the Hill Valley Preservation Society think it should be preserved _exactly_ the way it is, as part of our history and heritage! If Mayor Wilson ever wants my vote for State Senator, he'll have to--”

Marty slid a note into the collection tin. “Here you go, lady,” she said, hoping to deter her, “there’s a dollar.”

“Thank you,” she beamed. A bright blue leaflet was thrust into Marty’s hands: “don’t forget to take a flyer!”

They watched her scurry off to select another victim. “Listen,” Marty said. “About tomorrow...”

A car horn interrupted her _again_. “Jonathan!”

“It’s my dad,” Jennifer said, her eyes widening. “I’ve gotta go...”

“Right,” Marty said, deflating, because she’d really wanted to find out if Jennifer thought tomorrow was a proper date, or just a friendly, hanging out kind of deal. She watched her jog over to the car. “I’ll call you tonight.”

“Oh!” Jennifer said, stopping, “my phone’s broken! Here, let me give you my temporary number.”

It was far too short a time to take in Jennifer’s prettiness, or the way that her hair curled around the side of her face, before she’d finished writing it down on the back of the flyer.

She looked up through her lashes. “Bye.”

For a second, it seemed like there would be something more to their goodbye; but Marty smiled, and Jennifer smiled, and they held each other’s stare for just a couple of seconds before Jennifer turned back towards her car.

She sat there, a little stunned, before doing a double take at Jennifer’s writing.

_555-4823_

_♥ J x_

Holy shit. Marty was in deep.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Science occurs.

 

The October sky was darkening by the time she rolled into Lyon Estates – the blue and orange lights in the distance were of little concern to her, purely because they occurred so frequently in the neighbourhood that anything could have happened.

Except that as she skated closer, it became evident that the lights were outside the McFly residence.

Marty slowed down as she reached the drive, in which sat a clunky tow truck, plus what remained of the family car. The headlights had blown out, the front bumper looked like a failed origami construction – hell, even the hood had concertinaed like a cheap fan.

“Perfect,” she muttered, smacking the bumper. “Just perfect.”

Voices were already floating out from behind the front door, left ajar, and their uselessly blown-out screen door. Marty could smell Biff before she could hear his nasally whining – his cheap cologne was stifling.

“...can’t _believe_ you loaned me a car without telling me it had a blind spot!”

She pushed open the door. Ah, there he was. Obvious comb over, badly tailored suit, the whole works. It didn’t help that Biff was _huge_ , both in stature and stomach. Except for Marty’s brother, he towered over the whole family.

“I could’ve been killed!” he said, and Marty felt bad for thinking ‘ _what a shame’_ , but then didn’t really feel bad at all.

“Now, now, Biff, now, I never noticed any blind spot before when I would drive it,” stuttered her father, and then, when he noticed her, added an off-hand “hi, kiddo.”

Biff glanced at her with an unmasked air of superiority before returning to his attack. “What are you, blind, McFly? It's _there_ , how else do you explain that wreck out there?!”

Marty barely bothered tuning in to the conversation as she loitered, determined to express her absolute, crushing disappointment to her father. He was timidly asking about insurance coverage, clearly in vain, because Biff loved cars and had probably thought up a hundred loopholes just in case he ran into anything bad.

“Hey, I wanna know who's gonna pay for this?” he shouted indignantly, pointing at his greasy blazer. “I spilled beer all over it when that car smashed into me. Who's gonna pay my cleaning bill?”

 _When that car smashed into him?_ Marty thought. _It was the front of the car that was wrecked, not the back. You dirty liar._

“And where’s my reports?” Biff demanded.

“Uh, well, I haven't finished those up yet, but you know I figured since they weren't due til--”

Her father’s stammering was interrupted by Biff’s huge hands around his tie. He pulled until the knot was too tight, knocking the knuckles of his other hand into the smaller man’s forehead: “Hello?” Biff asked, as Marty’s dad tried to laugh along with the ‘joke’, “hello, anybody home? _Think_ , McFly, think! I gotta have time to submit them. Do you realise what would happen if I submit my reports from your company account? I'll get fired. You wouldn't want that to happen, would you?”

He did not immediately respond – evidently he was thinking exactly the same as Marty was thinking.

“ _Would you_?” Biff growled, far more aggressively.

“Of course not, Biff, now I wouldn't want that to happen!” said her father. Biff smirked, helping himself to the candy jar that Marty’s mother kept on the shelf, and Marty tried not to glare at him. “Now, uh, I'll finish those reports up tonight, and I'll run ‘em them on over first thing tomorrow, alright?”

“Hey, not too early, I sleep in on Saturday. Oh, McFly, your shoe's untied!” Biff said. It was a tired routine that Marty could predict word for word by now, but somehow her dad always fell for it: he looked down and got slapped in the face. “Don't be so gullible, McFly,” Biff admonished him.

Marty couldn’t help but think that maybe Biff shouldn’t be taking advantage of her father’s gullible nature if he was fully aware that it existed. “You got the place fixed up nice, McFly,” Biff added, giving an opinion on the McFly’s shitty house that Marty didn’t care about listening to. Especially when their ‘guest’ was rummaging through the fridge. “I have your car towed all the way to your house and all you've got for me is light beer?”

Maybe he would leave soon. Marty hoped so. It was one thing failing to hold her tongue around Strickland, who could at worst give her detention for it. It was a totally different thing to mouth off to her dad’s boss.

Biff wandered over towards the front door, stopping to stare at Marty as she waited by the entranceway: “what are you looking at, butthead?” he asked.

Marty held her breath - half so that she didn’t say anything, half so that she didn’t breathe in the sewer water he called aftershave – and shrugged a little instead.

“Say hi to your mom for me,” was his leaving remark, and Biff finally left the house. Marty was 90% sure that if she did pass on the message, her mother’s response wouldn’t be very family friendly.

God, the _car_. It was probably worth more as scrap now than it was to get it repaired.

“Now, I know what you’re gonna say, kiddo,” came her father’s quiet voice, “and you're right. You're right. But Biff just happens to be my supervisor, and... I'm afraid I'm not very good at confrontations.”

“But the car, Dad!” Marty burst out, “I mean, he wrecked it, he totalled it! I _needed_ that car tomorrow night, Dad, do you have any idea how important this was, do you have _any_ clue?”

“I know, and all I can say is... I’m _sorry_ ,” her father said, huffing a little with panic.

“Did it ever occur to you to say no?!” Marty asked exasperatedly. “I mean, just once, just say _no_.”

“Look, kiddo,” he began, “I know it’s hard for you to understand, but the fact is I’m just...” Just what? A pushover? A coward? “I’m not a fighter,” he concluded.

Marty had never pitied anyone so pathetic in all her life. She couldn’t think of a verbal response that justified her anger, so she threw her arms in the air instead, growled dangerously in the very back of her throat, and slammed her bedroom door behind her so hard that she could hear her mother’s ridiculous ornaments rattling in the living room. Later on, when she was practicing punk-rock pieces on her electric guitar – a sleek Ibanez model that her bandmate Paul favoured – the doorbell rang. Thinking it might be her mother, she stopped, not wanting to exacerbate the car situation any more tonight, but instead it sounded like someone selling peanut brittle.

_Just say no, just say no, just say no--_

Her father agreed to buy a whole case.

Marty cranked the amplifier up to ten, and absolutely let rip.

 

* * *

 

 

She was the last to sit down for dinner, moving the food around her plate with her fork as her dad tried to publicly comfort her over the Battle of the Bands debacle. “Believe me, Marty,” he said, crunching on peanut brittle, “you're better off not having to worry about all the aggravation and headaches of playing at that dance.”

“He’s absolutely right, Marty,” cut in her brother, Dave, who seemed to be being patronising on purpose to piss her off even more. “The last thing you need... is _headaches_.”

Marty stabbed at some mashed potato. “Do we have to watch this cartoon trash?” her sister asked, pointing at the TV; Dave and her dad were laughing at the ridiculous European accents from an ancient animated version of _20,000 Leagues Under The Sea._

_“Does the Professor ‘ave any fears for zis expedition?”  
“Certenlee. Ze Professor knows zere is gweat danger ahead of us.”_

A trudging gait announced the return of her mother from the kitchen.

“Kids,” she began, taking a swig from her glass, “we’re gonna have to eat this cake by ourselves. Your Uncle Joey didn’t make parole again.” A homemade cake was tossed carelessly onto the table, decorated with the words ‘ _Welcome Home Uncle Joey_!’ iced in red – a small bird was flying out of a jail cell.

Marty’s mom looked tired.

“It would be nice if you all dropped him a line...”

“Uncle ‘Jailbird’ Joey?” Marty smirked, devoid of humour.

“He’s your brother, Mom!” Dave protested.

“Yeah,” Linda agreed, “I think it’s a major _embarrassment_ having an uncle in prison.”

“We all make mistakes in life, children,” Marty’s mother sighed, tracing the rim of her glass with a fat finger.

David stopped rocking on his chair and was up like a shot. “Goddamnit, I’m late--”

“ _David_! Watch your mouth! And come here and kiss your mother before you go!”

“C’mon, Mom, make it fast, I’ll miss my bus,” he said, dusting down his Burger King uniform and kissing her on the cheek. “See you later, Pop,” he added, going to kiss his dad on the head, before: “ _hooo_! Time to change that oil!”

The screen door clicked behind him; George glanced up at his hairline, slick with gel, and chuckled.

Linda finished her mouthful. “Hey, Marty, I'm not your answering service... But whilst you were making a racket and pouting about the car, Jonathan Parker called you twice.”

Oh, Jesus, of course. Marty checked her watch – she’d been planning on calling Jennifer later anyway.

“I don't like him, Marty,” said her mom, “any boy who calls a girl’s house is just _asking_ for trouble.”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, instead staring down at her plate, as Linda fought the battle for her. “Oh, mother, there’s nothing wrong with being called by a boy.”

This was exactly why Marty could never tell her mother about Jennifer, or any plans regarding her. If she was so against her possibly being ‘chased after’ by a boy, how would she react to her daughter trying to romance a woman? It was an impossibility.

“I think it’s terrible!” came the strained response. “Boys chasing after girls! There’s no romance anymore. When I was your age I never chased a boy, or was called by a boy, or... Sat in a _parked car_ with a boy.”

“Then how does anyone ever _meet_ each other?” asked Linda.

A dreamy look came over their mother’s face, and she patted Linda’s hand with the one that wasn’t clutching her vodka and lemon. “Well,” she smiled. “It’ll just _happen_... Like the way I met your father.”

Linda’s lip curled. “That was so _stupid!_ Grandpa hit him with the car!”

“It was meant to be.”

The firm response wasn’t good enough for Linda, who sighed and went back to her food. Their mother continued on regardless: “if Grandpa hadn’t hit him, none of you would’ve been born! What was it you were doing, George? Bird watching?”

George looked up from Biff’s reports. “What, Lorraine? What?”

 If Marty had been Lorraine, she would’ve ignored that too. “Anyway, Grandpa hit him with the car and brought him into the house. He seemed so helpless, like a little lost puppy... My heart just went out for him.”

Linda pretended to gag, the nostalgia clearly getting to her: “yeah, Mom, we know, you've told us this story a million times. You felt sorry for him, so you decided to go with him to The Fish Under The Sea Dance.”

“No, it was The Enchantment Under The Sea Dance. Our first date,” Lorraine corrected – Marty noted that she didn’t correct her pity of him. It was all their marriage seemed to be based on. How _sad_ that was. “It was the night of that terrible thunderstorm, remember, George?”

George probably didn’t. He was too absorbed with the ‘cartoon trash’ on the film channel.

“Your father kissed me for the very first time on that dance floor.” The dreamy look was back – her mom was getting lost in some long-passed by memories. “It was then I realised... I was going to spend the rest of my life with him.”

Linda and Marty both made eye contact, then glanced at their father – all three pairs of eyes were on him, laughing at some trashy 80s bullshit on the television and doing someone else’s paperwork, hair too greased back and tie too tight from Biff’s grip.

Lorraine’s dreamy look dissipated. Her gaze was instead lost in the bottom of her glass, the vodka and lemon swirling sadly within.

 

* * *

 

Marty was passed out on her front when her alarm went off – it was Classix on Hill Valley’s radio station, which Jennifer sometimes stood in for when the host had scheduling conflicts. She slept through a few seconds of ‘Time Bomb Town’, but ultimately stirred when a ringtone went off somewhere underneath her pillow.

Jesus, where was it? Sleepily fumbling between loose covers, she finally managed to locate it and answer.

“Heeeello...?”

“Marty!” Oh, shit. “You didn’t fall asleep, did you?”

What the hell was the time? The radio said 12:28 – that was good enough. “Uh, Doc! Uh, no, no, don’t be silly.” She was still wearing jeans and a shirt, with an undershirt – they would be decent enough to go out in for an October night.

“Listen, this is very important,” Doc said, “I forgot my video camera. Could you stop by my place and pick it up on your way to the mall?”

Ooh, peanut brittle. “Um, yeah. On my way,” Marty said, and put down the phone.

God, it was _freezing_. She pulled on an extra pair of socks before her shoes, and grabbed whichever clothes could be layered that she got her hands on first – a denim jacket and a bright orange gilet. Good enough. Doc didn’t have enough fashion sense to pick out the double denim thing anyway.

After picking up the camera, she slid all the way over to the mall (the whole way downhill, lazily enough), only to find that Doc’s huge truck was parked up and open.

“Einstein!” Marty called out, rolling up to where Doc’s dog was obediently waiting for her. She gave his fur a ruffle, because _damn_ , Marty loved this dog. “Hey, Einstein, where’s the Doc, boy? Huh?”

She was just about to nuzzle him right back – it had been a whole week, after all – when the back of Doc’s truck began to open. There was light streaming out from the inside, and even Einstein tilted his head in confusion.

Why the hell was there a car in the back of Doc’s truck?

It gradually reversed – it would have been trunk first, but it looked like the second half of the car had been completely gutted and replaced with god knows what – and came to a stop mere feet from Marty. The vanity plate read ‘OUTATIME’. Coolant spewed in thick clouds around them, and the whole vehicle was a grimy silver, as though it had spent a long time in the shop without being polished up afterwards.

Actually, that’s probably exactly what had happened.

She gaped, taking in the sight of what should have been a technological monstrosity, but actually looked pretty badass.

Doc Brown ruined the elaborate entrance by nearly falling out of the gull wing doors. Her eyes were like saucers – she looked like she didn’t really know where she was.

“Doc!”

Doc turned around – it was as though she didn’t immediately recognise her own lab assistant. “Marty!” she cried, moving in for a hug but changing her mind at the last second, “you made it!”

“Yeah!” Marty said. God, what _was_ this? It was mad, it was incredible!

Doc Brown’s white hair was wild, escaping from the confines of a rushed bun; a toolkit was slung around her belt, and the pockets of her overalls overflowed with various knick-knacks. Bulldog clips, paper clips, pens and a ruler, a protractor and actually, these weren’t overalls at all, was that a _radiation suit_?

“Welcome to my latest experiment! This is the big one, the one I've been waiting for all my _life_!”

Marty grinned: “well, it’s that DeLorean we salvaged, right? What are you--”

Doc mock-slapped her hand away from the hood of the car. “Bear with me, Marty, all of your questions will be answered. Roll tape, we'll proceed...”

Marty was dragged over to the side in order to get the best backdrop for the film; she shouldered the video camera and began recording. “Alright, I’m ready.”

Doc stood up straighter and smoothed down her hair a little: “good evening, I'm Doctor Emma Brown. I'm standing in the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall. It's Saturday morning, October twenty fourth, 2015, one eighteen A.M., and this is temporal experiment number one.”

Temporal experiment? Apparently Marty was about to find out what that was: “c'mon, Einy,” Doc said, crouching down and addressing her dog, “get in there, _that_ a boy, in you go.” She buckled Einstein in, making sure the belt was secure, and attached a stopwatch to his collar. “Please note,” she said, holding up a matching one around _her_ neck, “that Einstein's clock is in complete synchronization with my control watch.”

“Right, check, Doc.”

“Good!” Doc said. “Have a good trip, Einstein. Watch your head.”

She pulled the door closed, and whipped out a comically large remote control, complete with a huge battery pack.

“You have that thing hooked up to the car?” Marty said, eyeing it incredulously.

She flicked a switch on the control and the entire car lit up. _Jesus_. “Watch this,” Doc murmured, concentration creasing her brow. The whole car was suddenly thrown into reverse – dear Christ, that was fast.

“Jesus,” Marty whispered, audible this time.

The DeLorean spun around the parking lot in what could have been a lap, had it not been for the clumsiness of the steering. Marty started to turn questioningly towards Doc, but was met with a frantic “not _me_! The car, the car!”

With a great deal of screeching and squealing, the car finally looked like it was in position. She tried not to feel concerned when Doc guided them into its path. “If my calculations are correct,” she grinned, “when this baby reaches eighty eight miles per hour...”

Marty met her excited stare. Her eyes crinkled at the edges.

“You’re gonna see some _serious_ shit.”

A flurry of switches, the burning of rubber: the car was rocking slowly now, the urge to move becoming overwhelming. A small counter on the remote control was counting up through the forties and fifties. Marty began to sidestep away, but a bewildered glance from Doc had her sidestepping back again.

At sixty five miles per hour, Doc let the car start moving. It took off instantly, hurtling towards them from across the parking lot. Marty was rooted to the ground in shock, but suddenly regained her senses and tried to book it – Doc held her back, a frantic ‘ _watch this, watch this!_ ’ on her lips.

As the counter hit _88.00_ , there was a terrible, bright flash of electric blue. The entire car crackled and fizzed with the anticipation of... what? What was it that it was waiting for?

Whatever it was, it happened quickly, and loudly. There were sparks, like lightning. There was a field of some sort generating in front of the car, encircling the bumper. With a brilliant whirring and the smell of electrical burning, the DeLorean disappeared in an implosion of smoke. All that was left to say it had been there at all were two tire tracks, aflame beneath their feet; Marty and Doc spun around as the fire spread past them, but of course they saw nothing.

The DeLorean had simply... shot out of existence.

Doc _exploded_ with excitement. “HAH!” she shrieked, jumping up and down like a child, “ _what did I tell you?!_ Eighty eight miles per hour!! The temporal displacement occurred at exactly 1:20 a.m. and zero seconds!”

Marty stared at the place where the car _had_ been – the vanity plate was all that was left, spinning madly on one corner before dropping like a stone. She felt an odd urge to laugh uncontrollably at the entire situation. Doc practically vibrating in a radiation suit? Disappearing cars? _Did Doc just remove her dog from the very plane of existence they inhabited?_

She tried to pick up the vanity plate, needing something tangible to believe that the DeLorean hadn’t been a spectacularly vivid hallucination, but it was scalding to the touch. “Ah, Jesus Christ!” she gasped, dropping it, “Jesus Christ, Doc, you _disintegrated Einstein_!”

“Calm down, Marty,” Doc nearly shouted with glee. (Marty ignored this in favour of hyperventilating.) “I didn't disintegrate anything! The molecular structure of both Einstein and the car are _completely intact_.”

“Then where the hell _are_ they?!” Marty cried, her voice cracking.

“The appropriate question is: _when_ the hell are they!”

 _The next words out of Doc’s mouth had better make some damn sense,_ she thought, trying to catch her breath.

“You see, Einstein has just become the world's first time traveller.” Oh, God. “I sent him _into the future_.” Doc’s rapid pacing was hard to keep up with – she was darting around like a dragonfly, waving her arms in the air as though she was conducting an enormous orchestra during a particularly violent crescendo. “ _One minute into the future to be exact_. And at exactly one twenty one A.M. we should catch up with him and the time machine...!”

“Wait a minute,” Marty said. She was starting to feel light headed. Dizzy from watching Doc run around all over the shop, she failed to keep her voice steady: “wait a minute, Doc. Ah... Are you telling me you built a _time machine_... Out of a _DeLorean_?”

“The way I see it,” said Doc, “if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?”

Marty nodded, because of course, _style_ , what was she thinking in questioning that? Jesus, oh, sweet Jesus Christ, _style_ , it was _completely clear now_.

“Besides, the stainless steel construction made the flux dispersal--”

Doc’s watch beeped. Marty barely caught the hurried ‘look out!’ before she was shoved out of the path of a rapidly re-emerging _time machine_. The tires continued to protest as it came to a halt, as the _time machine_ came to a halt - the goddamn DeLorean that Marty had helped to drag out of a junkyard mere months ago was an actual, functioning _time_ _machine_.

The world was suddenly a lot quieter and smaller. It looked like it was only these two figures, one wiry, one short, along with a _possible_ dog in a DeLorean, that mattered on the whole of the planet. Doc and Marty met each other’s eyes with equal amounts of apprehension. Both of them were wondering the same thing - which of them was going to poke the DeLorean to provoke a reaction from it?

Doc eventually meandered over. Marty readjusted the focus on the camera.

A huge cloud of steam poured from the back without warning and they both jumped – were the windows clouded over or frosted over? It was impossible to tell, until Doc winced and ventured forwards to open the door.

She withdrew her hand instantly, hissing. “What, what, is it hot?!” Marty asked.

“No,” she said, shaking her fingers out, “it’s _cold_ , damn cold!” Manoeuvring the handle with the tip of her shoe, instead, the ice around the edges splintered away, revealing a very cosy Einstein within. He was still safely buckled in to the driver’s seat.

“Ha _ha_ , Einstein, you little devil!” Doc giggled. She sounded ever-so-slightly hysterical. Marty watched with a mixture of astonishment and mild horror when she held up the two stop watches: “Einstein's clock is _exactly_ one minute behind mine, it's still ticking!” Doc shrieked.

With the seatbelt now unfastened, Einstein darted back into Doc’s truck. “He’s alright,” Marty breathed. This was _unbelievable_.

The older woman radiated jubilance, and started to point to anything at hand to illustrate her points, whether this was a watch, the car, or her own head. “He's fine, and he's completely unaware that anything happened! As far as he's concerned the trip was _instantaneous_. That's why Einstein's watch is exactly one minute behind mine.” Doc now waved her hands, her explanation consumed by ecstatic pride: “he skipped over that minute to instantly arrive at this moment in time. Come here, I'll show you how it works!”

Not that Marty had a choice. Perhaps she was so astounded that Doc had assumed control of where she needed to walk to. “First,” Doc said, clambering into the passenger seat, “you turn the time circuits on.” A lever near the handbrake caused a sheet of numbers to light up on the dashboard, in vibrant reds, greens, and yellows. “ _This_ readout tells you where you're going-” the red display- “this one tells you where you are-” the green display- “this one tells you where you were.” The yellow display, showing only two minutes previous.

The video footage had never been so unsteady. “You input the destination time on this keypad. Say you wanna see the signing of the Declaration of Independence,” Doc carried on, grinning, and typed in _07-04-1776_. “Or witness the birth of Christ!” _12-25-0000_.

“Here's a red-letter date in the history of science: October fifth, nineteen-eighty-five.”

Doc plugged it in, pausing for a second to stare at the display: “yes, of course,” she murmured, “October fifth, nineteen-eighty-five...”

She had never been amazing in history class, but this was hardly ringing any bells. “What? I don’t get what happened,” Marty said, shutting off the video camera.

“That was the day I invented time travel!” Doc laughed. “I was standing on the edge of my toilet, hanging a clock, the porcelain was wet... I slipped, hit my head on the edge of the sink, and when I came to-! I had a _revelation_. A vision. A picture, in my head. Of this!” she said, jabbing towards the back of the car for emphasis. A Y-shaped contraption was boxed securely behind the seats, and Marty immediately began to film again, because this was almost certainly the important bit of the experiment. “This is what makes time travel possible,” Doc enthused. “The flux capacitor!”

“The flux capacitor,” Marty repeated. This was too cool.

“It's taken me almost thirty years and my entire family fortune to realise the vision of that day. My god. Has it been that long...?”

For the second time that evening, Marty saw a dreamy, nostalgic look creep into someone’s eyes. “Things have certainly changed around here,” Doc said, disentangling her gangly frame from the passenger seat and peering at the parking lot, “I remember when this was all farmland as far as the eye could see!”

Nowadays, Twin Pines Mall was a bulldozed, concrete slab covering the entire surrounding area. Uphill, the outskirts of Hill Valley was detectable by the gentle neon glow only achieved in the early hours, and even the edges were built up and grey. Any farm that might have existed was certainly long gone.

 “Old Man Peabody owned all of this. He had this crazy idea about breeding pine trees...” Doc murmured absently.

Marty was too busy documenting every inch of the DeLorean, watching her shoes in the puddles that were pouring off it now that it was back in open air. “This is heavy duty, Doc, this is _great_. Does it run on, uh, regular gasoline?”

“Unfortunately, no. It requires something with a little more ‘kick’. Plutonium!” Doc beamed.

“Oh, plutonium,” Marty said, before nearly dropping the video camera as she realised what that entailed. “Wait a minute, are you telling me this sucker’s _nuclear_?!”

“Hey, keep rolling there!” Doc scolded. “No, no, this sucker's electrical. But I need a nuclear reaction to generate the one point twenty one gigawatts of electricity that I need.”

“Doc,” Marty whined, “you don’t just walk into a store and buy _plutonium_!”

The scientist tried storming back to her truck –

“Did you rip that off?!”

\- but ultimately backtracked. “Of course,” she hissed, waving her hands for silence despite the deserted parking lot, “from a group of Syrian resistance fighters!” The hiss turned into a frighteningly proud grin: “they wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their plutonium and in turn gave them a shoddy bomb _casing_ full of used pinball machine parts!”

Doc turned on her heel and darted away, raving about _radiation suits_ and _prepare to reload_. “Jesus,” Marty whispered. She didn’t seem to be kidding at all, as much as Marty had hoped she might be.

The tension was unbearable as Doc carefully removed a vial of plutonium from a huge, warning-yellow coloured case; they both jumped violently when it fell into place inside the DeLorean. The stab of fright nearly caused Marty to drop the video camera.

Then it was all over, and Doc was screwing the lead lid back onto the container. “Safe now,” she said, reappearing from underneath the white material, “everything’s lead lined.”

Marty stared on as Doc busied herself putting everything where it should be – empty plutonium vial back with the others, giving reminders about being careful with the camera footage, turning sharply back to the stack of cases to retrieve her own case, babbling about the possibility that there ‘might not be cotton underwear in the future’...

Doc said: “I’m allergic to all synthetics,” just as Marty said: “the future?”

“Is that where you’re going?” she clarified.

“That's right, twenty five years into the future! I've always dreamed of seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of humankind...”

Well, why not? It seemed logical for a scientist as curious as Doc Brown to want to achieve.

“I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series!”

...Marty really hoped she was joking.

“Uh, Doc,” she said nervously, in the firm tone of voice a person used when they didn’t want to let others know they’re nervous to voice something.

“Hm?” Doc answered, fiddling with the clips in her pocket.

“Uh. Look me up.” Marty adjusted the position of the camera on her shoulder. “When you get there.”

Doc Brown’s lips quirked up into a smile, a knowing smile, and she nodded as though she understood the full extent of the request. “Indeed I will,” she promised. The particular kind of smile she wore was not a grin, or a beam brought on by a maddened, euphoric stint of scientific breakthrough – it was a kind that showed how old she actually was, and showed the wisdom that came with a close friendship.

“Roll ‘em.”

Marty began filming.

“I, Doctor Emma Brown,” she started, restraining herself from the usual theatrics she was prone to, “am about to embark on a historic journey.”

Her hand drifted to her face in disbelief: “what have I been thinking of - I almost forgot to bring some extra plutonium! How did I ever expect to get back? One pallet, one trip, I must be out of my mind...!”

From inside the truck, Einstein (still kitted out in his own canine radiation suit) let fly a string of barks.

“What is it, Einy?” Doc said, still smiling, but with a hint of caution creeping into her expression.

Marty did not see the point on which the dog was fixating on behind her, and nor did she see the flash of headlights as a bright blue VW drifted steadily closer. What she did see, however, was Doc’s face drain of all time travelling anticipation and excitement, to be replaced with blank horror.

“Oh my god... They found me, I don't know how but they found me. _Run for it, Marty_!”

She darted away, lunging for the truck: “who, who?!”Marty yelled.

“Who do you _think_?!” Doc shouted back, her voice cracking, “ _the Syrians_!”

Marty spun on her heels. Directly in her line of sight now was a van with the sunroof cut out; from out of the vehicle rose a camo-clad resistance fighter. The tires squealed as the soldier readied his weapon, and barked instructions to the driver in a language Marty didn’t recognise, and _oh Christ the van was coming towards them and that guy had a **gun** in his hands._

“—Holy _shit_!” Marty yelped. She ducked down by the DeLorean just as the soldier opened fire – bullets tore into the concrete around them with a military precision Marty never thought she would she in her whole life.

“I’ll draw their fire!” Doc cried hysterically, and despite the sparks flying off the side of her truck, she dove to recover a small silver pistol from her belongings.

She squinted, took aim, and _clink! clink!_

To Marty’s horror, nothing happened. Doc gasped, her eyes widening, and she leapt for cover by the side of the truck, on the opposite side to where her lab assistant was taking refuge--

“Doc, _wait_!” Marty said, desperate, because Doc couldn’t put her life in danger like this, not for _her_.

The van pulled up by the truck, and the driver’s trigger finger twitched; he was close enough now for Marty to detect the fury in his eyes at being tricked, and couldn’t imagine that someone from a country where civil war was bloody and violent would take well to being duped or betrayed. Doc seemed to realise this about a case of plutonium too late. She threw her hands in the air and dropped the pistol.

Mercy was not on the to-do list for the soldier and his driver tonight. If bullets had burrowed their way into concrete easily, they cut clean through Doc Brown’s radiation suit with surgical intent.

“ ** _No!_** ” Marty screeched, throwing herself forwards onto her feet, “ _bastards_!”

The soldier took one swift look at Marty’s radiation suit, registered her as an associate of Doc Brown, and opened fire on her, too – she jumped in front of Doc’s truck to avoid the clumsy spray, and dug her fingers into the grille, needing the painful metal to ground her momentarily.

As she made the decision to sprint for the mall’s exit, the driver made the decision to pull out from the rear of the truck.

The soldier could not have been older than twenty five – for a shocked second, furious brown eyes met frightened blue. Marty clamped hers shut. She didn’t want to the last thing she thought about to be the barrel of a gun at the end of a vengeful man’s arm.

_Clink!_

Marty ripped herself out of the memory of spending that July afternoon at the lake with Jennifer, and just about allowed herself to believe her ridiculous luck. She heard cursing and bellowing as the soldier tried to fix the jam, and then, even more miraculously, _she heard_ _the driver trying to fix the stalled engine of the van_ , but she wasn’t staying around to watch – the gull wing door of the DeLorean’s driver’s side was still wide open. Marty clumsily jumped into the car, allowing herself one last look at Doc Brown’s body. She could only see her friend’s feet, but they were motionless, and the shock pierced her a second time when she closed the door on their malfunctioning assailants.

She turned the key and the DeLorean’s engine crackled to life, rough with age and crude customisation. She pulled out into the parking lot at the same time as the van caught up with her, but the Syrian duo had only fixed on problem, as Marty’s wing mirror still showed the soldier fighting with his poorly-crafted automatic.

She changed gears, catching her elbow on the mechanics behind her. Thank god her dad had raised her on a stick-shift.

 _Oh, shit,_ she thought, recognising more sparks in the parking lot concrete, _that’ll be the gun again._ The wheel was a squirming animal in her hands, ready to twist and break free, so she wrestled it back into her control and tried not to swerve too ambitiously when they reached the next section of the parking lot.

“C’mon, _move_ , damnit,” she muttered, trying not to push the acceleration too far, because the car had lain in a scrapheap for near-on thirty years and she was definitely screwed if it seized up. Luckily, the Syrians’ VW seemed older, and had not perhaps been taken care of as well as the DeLorean. Its turning circle was appalling. Marty easily made it around the curve the parking lot road took – the driver of the van had to be way more careful. She almost felt as though she was winning until, in her wing mirror, she spotted the soldier struggling to pull an enormous RPG through the cut out sunroof.

“Holy shit!” Marty said, numbed a little by the adrenaline thrumming through her veins: “let’s see if you _bastards_ can do ninety!”

The short answer was that they couldn’t. The long answer was that the Syrian’s ate Marty’s dust in their crappy old van – Marty was making an amazing getaway.

She was too focused on the possible smashing of the windshield on the toll booth barrier to notice the flux capacitor pulsing in the back seat, or the lit-up display linked to the time circuits, shining in red, yellow, and green. It came as a nauseatingly horrifying surprise, therefore, when the intact windshield reflected an electric blue flash into the vehicle, and when Marty hit a scarecrow instead of the toll booth barrier.

She yelled in garbled vowels as the scarecrow flew over the bonnet, and swerved to avoid some trees, and then yelled _blindly_ when her radiation helmet obscured her vision.

There was a muffled crash of debris. It didn’t sound solid, but whatever it was, Marty had hit it at a cool forty five miles per hour.

Somewhere above her, a roof fell in with a clatter.

 _I can’t believe I didn’t put on my seatbelt_ , was her first thought; her second thought was _I was being targeted by possible terrorists, of course I didn’t put on my damn seatbelt. McFly, you’re an idiot._

Her third thought was _maybe I have a concussion_.

Her fourth was _holy shit, Doc’s dead._

 

* * *

 

The turning signal was still flickering, a steady pulse against the darkness of the barn. It must have been a barn, Marty reasoned, because smelled very strongly of cow shit.

From beyond the red beat of the blinker, muffled voices panicked. Maybe they could help her? Then again, maybe not, because as Marty opened the gull wing door and tried to get out, she caught sight through the visor of a screaming, and rapidly retreating, family of four.

“Listen, listen!” she tried, tumbling over a heap of straw – god, where _was_ she? When the hell had there been a farm near the Twin Pines Mall? Cows lowed from the back of the barn. The smell was even stronger with her visor removed.

“Hello?” Marty asked. There was a huge step to avoid when exiting the barn, which was difficult to see even with the radiation helmet away from her eyes. “Uh.... excuse me?”

The house in front of her had all of its lights on, but no-one was to be seen anywhere. “Sorry about your barn,” she tried again, but was interrupted by the wooden wall to the right of her splintering. Marty stumbled backwards, still dazed and shocked, but not enough to ignore the fact that she was being shot at for the second time that evening.

“Shoot ‘im, Pa, shoot the spaceman!” screeched a bratty kid, and Marty tried in vain to close the door behind her. She remembered just in time that it was _also_ made of wood, and ducked as buckshot peppered where she’d stood ten seconds ago.

“Take that, you mutated son-of-a--” shouted ‘Pa’. He didn’t manage to finish, because Marty decided to take apart more of his barn, by way of smashing through its entrance with the DeLorean.

On her way to the main road, which would take her far away from the smell of cows and gunpowder, she ran over a fuzzy sapling. It was decided that the DeLorean had seemed to survive worse that night without breaking up yet. She didn’t think too much of it.

There were no road signs down the initial stretch of asphalt; Marty began to panic. The radiation suit was too hot, a prickly kind of hot, but she didn’t want to stop and unbuckle her seatbelt to take it off – it was almost like tempting fate. “Alright, alright, okay, McFly,” she babbled, wiping a bead of sweat away before it rolled down her jaw. “Get a grip on yourself. It's all a dream.” The sun _had_ risen too quickly to feel real – wasn’t that a sign of dreaming? “Just a very... intense... dream.”

She had started to hyperventilate when she slammed on the brakes. No-one was around to see her illegal manoeuvre, or the embarrassing bump to the head she sustained on the gull wing door as she untangled herself from the driver’s seat; which meant that no-one was around to see the astonishment, etched achingly into her expression, at the sight of Lyon Estates. It was bare. It was a _bare field_. There were two construction vehicles, and the stupid lion statues that guarded the entrance, and a billboard advertising ‘ _the home of tomorrow... today!_ ’.

And that was it.

Marty wanted to go home.

Except her home didn’t even exist yet.

A car was cruising gently down the road towards her, and she took off her helmet: “woah, hey, listen,” she said between gasps, flagging down the driver, “you gotta help me--”

“ _Don’t stop, Wilbur, **DRIVE**!_ ” shrieked the lady in the passenger seat, shaking the driver by the lapels of his coat.

Marty watched them drive away.

Perhaps it hadn’t been the best plan to approach someone in a luminous yellow radiation suit, breathing heavily at them. She collapsed into the front seat of the DeLorean, her lungs burning, her vision spinning, her chest heaving with fright and confusion. To find that you are unable to return home, however bad home may be in the first place, is one of the most isolating realisations a person can have.

Marty knew her house would come into existence within the next thirty years. But she also knew she would never be welcome there if she remained in this time. It could never be a home again.

With her breathing slowing and heartbeat no longer hammering, she confirmed her suspicions – the display connected to Doc’s time circuits showed OCT 05 1985 on both the red and green sections.

Red readout tells you where you're going. Green readout tells you where you are.

Unfortunately, both readouts went dead almost as soon as she’d glanced at them, a mechanical whine bleeding through the electronics. “This is nuts,” Marty hissed, slapping the display. Okay, so the time circuits had powered down – that was okay. The DeLorean still functioned as a car. She could coast straight into downtown Hill Valley and phone for help.

The car didn’t start. “Aw, c’mon,” she said, gritting her teeth and turning the key. Nothing.

“ _Perfect_!” she cursed, smacking the wheel.

A small alarm sounded, and flashes of red alerted Marty to the fact that the ro... ro-ent... the plutonium chamber was empty. _Great_. Just great.

It was still too hot for the radiation suit, and even more so post-panic, so she stripped it off and ditched the things she didn’t need in the car. Doc’s camera, her iPod, her headphones, and the radiation suit were all safely piled onto the passenger seat.

The perfect hiding place for the car was underneath the Lyon Estates billboard – it didn’t look like much was going on in the construction site anyway. She manually pushed it well out of sight.

And then began the long walk to Hill Valley.

Two miles. She rolled up her denim sleeves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I'm definitely including all the deleted scenes. I love them so much.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marty tampers.

The town square was – to put it mildly – _transformed_. It was nothing like the shitfest Marty was used to loitering in. The cinema, loudly daubed in bright paints, advertised seats for _Commando_ for three dollars and fifty cents. Since when had a ticket to the movies been that cheap? Marty was still frowning at the sign as she stepped backwards into the road, at which point she was promptly honked at by a neat little Somerset Regal. Dazedly, she waved an apology, too focused on the gas station across the road which offered a gallon for a dollar and twenty cents. Since when had _gas_ been that cheap?!

Records with smoking cherubs, and Native Americans throwing tea into the harbour, and a guy in loose jeans facing an American flag... Man, the few records that _were_ in the display windows in town were nowhere near the condition that these ones were. These sleeves looked brand new.

Her rapidly-derailing train of thought was interrupted, her heart ricocheting off every rib in her chest, when the clock in the courthouse tower struck to signify the half hour.

Oh, _Jesus_. Oh, Jesus Christ...

_Remember, fellas, the future is in your hands. If you believe in progress, re-elect Mayor Red Thomas - progress is his middle name!_

Marty stared at the, quite frankly, huge hunk of junk that was a white van with a speaker mounted on top. But it passed for an election van: _Mayor Red Thomas's progress platform means more jobs, better education, bigger civic improvements, and lower taxes. On election day, cast your vote for a proven leader, re-elect Mayor Red Thomas..._

She nearly tumbled into the gigantic trash can at her heels, and quickly fished out the newspaper on the top, shaking off Diet Pepsi cans and Big League Chew wrappers.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1985, screamed the subheading.

“This has gotta be a dream.”

Her focus on the newspaper distracted her, and again she was nearly knocked flat on her ass – “uh, excuse me, pardon me,” she said, first by way of apology, but then realising that she could ask the lady who’d bumped into her for help: “could you pinch me?”

The lady, who has been smiling, stared at her. “I _beg_ your pardon?”

“Y’know,” Marty said, “pinch me. Pinch me-”

_Crack!_

“Shame on you!” scolded the lady, who stomped off on her merry way.

Marty hissed, rubbing her cheek. “Ah, that’ll do... Thanks a lot.”

This was definitely not a dream. The sting in Marty’s face said so, anyway.

Spotting a sign in the window of the aerobics store front, which seemed to have been replaced by a coffee house called ‘Lou’s Cafe’, Marty dashed across the road towards the ‘public telephone’ they had advertised. The little bell jingled as she stumbled through the door, and the stout man behind the counter, turning to meet her dishevelled presence, looked up.

“Hey, kid! What d’you do, jump ship?”

“What?” Marty asked.

The man smirked. He had a large gap between his front teeth. This, presumably, was Lou. “What’s with the life preserver?”

Marty took in her surroundings – the jukebox with rows on records lined up, the bright red leatherette stools, the gaudy decor.

“I just wanna use the phone,” she said faintly.

His expression softened: “yeah, it’s in the back.”

Marty’s strides seemed to be getting wider and wider the more time stretched out. Rifling through the phone book in the closet the handset was housed within, she scanned down the ‘B’ section. “Brown, Brown, Brown...” she muttered. Earl, Edwin, Emelie, and _ah,_ Emma L, scientist. “Great! You’re alive,” she murmured. It was a small victory. She was taking what she could get today.

Whilst waiting for the dial tone to drop out, Marty glanced out onto the diner. It was sheer unluckiness that Lou happened to walk by just as her alarm went off, and a sharp look was shot her way as she tried to swipe at her phone screen without bringing it into view. Being late for school wasn’t exactly her biggest problem at the moment.

There was no answer, so Marty hung up (with maybe a little more force than was necessary), and swiped the page with Doc’s address on. It was a plan, at the very least.

“Do you know,” she asked, moving to the front of house, “where sixteen-forty Riverside--”

“Are you gonna order something, kid?” Lou interrupted.

“Uh... yeah.”

Marty took a seat on one of the leatherette stools. “Give me a Monster.”

“A monster what?” Lou asked. “I can’t give you a monster sized anything unless you order something.”

“Right,” Marty said, trying again, “give me a... Red Bull.”

Lou raised an eyebrow. “Do I wanna know what a ‘red bull’ is, little lady?”

This was going nowhere. “Look,” Marty sighed, “just give me something with energy in it, okay?”

This response seemed to satisfy Lou. “Something with energy in it,” he confirmed gruffly.

Marty stared in confusion as he poured her a coffee - black – and whilst he was distracted, she pulled a bill from her jacket pocket. It was a twenty ( _shit_ ), but the date on the front read ‘SERIES 1981’ (thank god).

Lou raised an eyebrow yet again when she held it out, and the younger man sitting next to her followed its path into the register with a jealous squint, but she felt like she could get over all that this time. Seeing as Lou had just given her all her change, in various bills and coins, which had been circulated before she was born.

She rubbed the back of her neck nervously. At least the coffee might wake her up a bit.

“Hey, _McFly_!”

She whirled around on her stool to face the doorway; taking up most of it stood a well built, menacing adolescent of around 18 or so, wearing a red button down tucked into a pair of jeans.

“Whaddaya think you’re doin’?” the guy sneered, and there was no mistaking him: the crooked nose, the heavy-set jaw, even the way he swaggered into the diner, a lot less weight at his belly but enough arrogance to weight him down anyway.

“ _Biff_ ,” Marty breathed.

“Hey, I’m talking to you, McFly, you Irish bug,” Biff said, staring right through Marty as he stalked closed. Marty could only hold her breath, actively frightened, but both to her relief and horror, Biff _was_ actually looking through her.

“Oh, hey Biff, hey guys,” said the young man next to her, rising to his feet unsteadily, “how’re you doing...?”

 _Oh my God_ , Marty’s brain managed to come up with before shorting out. The plain, unfashionable sweater; the cereal and coffee breakfast combination. He was still rocking a terrible haircut, but at least none of his hair was grey. _Dad._

“Yeah,” Biff said, brushing off the polite small talk as easily as he could brush off Marty’s skinny father. “You got my homework finished, McFly?”

“Uh, well, actually, I figured since it wasn’t due til Mond--”

“Hello,” Biff yelled, “hello, anybody home?!”

It was the tired routine, yet still brand new. Marty would have bet anything that the rapping of knuckles against George’s head hurt more in 1985 than it did in her present day. “ _Think_ , McFly, think! I gotta have time to recopy it. You realise what would happen if I hand in _my_ homework in _your_ handwriting? I’ll get kicked outta school. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”

George’s mouth made an ‘o’ shape as he tried to think of a response that wasn’t the truth.

Biff’s fist curled in the front of his sweater soon made his decision for him. “ _Would you?_ ”

“Well, no, of course not, Biff, I wouldn’t want that to happen.” George rambled.

Marty, who had been going back-and-forth between the faces of who’d been talking, looked back towards Biff. The only issue was that Biff was staring at _her,_ too.

“What are you lookin’ at, butthead?”

“Hey Biff,” said a voice from behind her – a glove clad hand yanked at her orange gilet. “Get a load of this chick’s life preserver! This dork thinks she’s gonna _drown_.”

Biff and his gang took a second to have a quick little jeer at Marty’s fashion tastes, and George, to Marty’s dislike, laughed alongside them, eager to have the torment directed someplace else. It was short lived.

“Yeah, well, what about my homework, McFly?”

“Uh, okay, Biff, uh,” George said, trying to play it cool. He even casually scooped up a spoonful of cereal to punctuate the end of his offer. “I'll finish that on up tonight, and I'll bring it over first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Not too early,” Biff said, because he slept in on Sundays, and would always sleep in on the weekend. “Hey McFly, your shoe’s untied--”

 _Crack!_ The old point and slap routine resurfaced. Or... surfaced? It was hard to tell, when the action was still so obviously new in this timeline.

“Don’t be so gullible, McFly!” was Biff’s parting advice, followed by, “I don’t wanna see you in here again.”

“Yeah, alright, bye-bye,” George mumbled, faux-laughing and spooning more cereal into his face.

Marty couldn’t help it. She stared. The diner was oddly quiet after the door slammed shut behind Biff; through the window, he and his gang all clambered into a flashy car. Has Marty spared it any more than a glance, she could have _maybe_ worked out what year the model was, but as it was, she recognised it as a Cadillac Eldorado and focused even harder on the man sitting next to her.

He dropped his spoon, annoyed. “What?!”

“You’re George McFly,” Marty replied instantly.

“Yeah, who are you?” George retorted.

Marty was spared from having to come up with an alter ego by the busboy, who injected himself into the space between the two stools, and began to prod at George. “Say,” he scolded, “what do you let those boys push you around like that for?”

“Well, they’re bigger than me,” said George, taking out his wallet to pay for breakfast.

“Stand tall, boy!” said the busboy. “Have some respect for yourself! Don’t you know? If you let people walk over you now, they’ll be walking over you for the rest of your life. Look at me,” he said, gesturing to his immaculate uniform, and then jutting out an arm to compare his skin tone to that of George’s. “You think I’m gonna spend the rest of my life in this _slop house_?”

“Watch it, Goldie,” called out Lou.

“No, Sir!” Goldie continued, ignoring him. “I’m gonna make something of myself! I’m going to night school, and one day, I’m gonna be somebody!”

“That’s right,” interjected Marty, “he’s gonna be Mayor! They’ll want him to run for State Senator!”

“Yeah, I’m... _Mayor..._ Now _that’s_ a good idea!” Goldie grinned. “And State Senator! I could keep going all the way!”

Lou sneered as he trudged past. “A black senator. That’ll be the day.”

“You wait and see, Mr. Caruthers!” Goldie said, his tone snippy. “I _will_ be Mayor, and I _will_ be State Senator! I’ll be the best senator California’s ever seen, and I’m gonna clean up this town!”

“Good,” mocked Lou, “you can start by sweeping the floor!”

Goldie was lost in a dream as the owner of the diner pushed a broom into his hands: “Senator Wilson,” he tried. Marty wanted to smile, but couldn’t help feeling like she’d messed something up a little. “I like the sound of that...”

She sipped her coffee, and wondered what George made of the whole conversation, and then nearly shattered the cup in fright when she realised that George wasn’t sitting next to her anymore. Whirling around, she caught a glimpse of him cruising past the window on a plain bike, ringing the bell all the way past the diner.

She dashed out, bursting through the diner doors like a human hurricane. “Hey!” she shouted, “Dad! Uh, George! _You on the bike_!!”

She followed him down alleyways she didn’t recognise, and side roads that she _did_ recognise – in fact, this was looking more and more like Grandpa Artie and Grandma Sylvia’s part of town. As she lurched onto Sycamore and 2 nd, it soon became clear that George was no longer anywhere to be found. Shit.

But wait – was that his bike? It was propped up against a tree next to the roadside, but George wasn’t nearby, and this definitely wasn’t the outside of her Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

Marty looked up. A single leaf fluttered down from up on high, landing briefly on her nose.

George McFly was situated on the broadest branch of a sycamore tree. He had a pair of binoculars glued to his eyes, but Marty didn’t need any to have a clear view of, from within the house across the road, a young woman trying on lingerie.

Oh. Oh, _gross_. “He’s a _peeping tom_ ,” she murmured, bewildered and disgusted.

She glanced up again, unsure as to what her course of action should be. George shuffled forwards eagerly (oh, _ew_ ), and then, failing to grip the branch tightly enough with his knees, lost his footing.

She watched in horror as his hands slipped, grazing the bark as he awkwardly tried to regain his balance. Whether it was from being rooted to the ground in shock, or frozen from indecisiveness, it was too short a timeframe for Marty to get herself out of the way – George fell, his feet clipping her skull as he landed, and they both crumpled in a heap on the asphalt.

The last thing she saw before blacking out was George’s panicked face, his grazed hands fluttering where he lay sprawled in the road. The last thing she _heard_ , however, was a car slowing as it passed, and a gruff voice not-unlike her Grandpa Sam’s saying: “hey, you! Damn kids! Get your girlfriend outta the road...!!”

 

* * *

 

It was dark when Marty stirred. She was in a comfortable bed, with thin, cotton sheets and fluffy pillows behind her head; cracking open her eyes, she made out a figure against the darkened window, moving at the sound of her awakening.

“Dad,” she murmured, “is that you?”

“Hey, relax,” said her father, getting up and pressing a damp cloth to her head, “you’ve been asleep for, uh, almost nine hours now.”

“Had a horrible nightmare,” Marty mumbled, “dreamed that I went back in time.... It was terrible...”

“Well,” her father said, chuckling. “You’re safe and sound now. Back in good ol’ nineteen-eighty-five.”

Marty’s eyes snapped open. “ _Nineteen-eighty-five_?”

Her father turned the bedside lamp on, and Marty sat bolt upright to stare at not her father, but George, her father within the past, the gangly teenager whose neck prickled in the same way hers did, and who did Biff’s homework for him: “you’re my dahhh,” she said, hyperventilating, “you’re my dahh...”

“I’m George,” he said. “But I guess you already knew that.”

“Yeah,” Marty squeaked, because it was truly hitting her now, that this wasn’t a crazy dream, and that she wasn’t cracking up, that this was real and this was _her real dad before she’d been born_. He had a normal hairline, and skin free from worry lines, and no stupid ties to be seen. “But you’re so... uh.... you’re so.... your _hair..._ ”

“Just relax, Donna,” he tried, waving his hands a little in an awkward fashion, “you’ve got a big bruise on your head.”

She felt at her head – there was a huge lump at her temple, that much was true – and went to throw off the bedclothes to check it in the mirror. The covers quickly went back around her again. “Argh!” she yelped, “where’s my shirt?”

Marty had been sitting there in her sports bra and jeans.

“Over there!” George said, startled. “On my reader’s digest shelving...”

Marty went to reach out for it, unsure as to how she could do it without exposing herself again.

“...I’ve never seen someone put their hometown on their underwear before, Donna.”

“Donna,” Marty spluttered, “why do you keep calling me Donna?”

“Well, uh, that _is_ your name, isn’t it?” George asked. He was twisting his fingers between his palms nervously. “Donna Karan? From New York?  It’s written all over your underwear...”

He reached out a hand to point out the stitching at her ribs, but Marty flinched, hard, and he withdrew again. “Oh, I guess they call you something else, huh,” he tried.

“Yeah, actually, people... call me Marty.”

“Oh,” said George. “Well, pleased to meet you, Donna... Marty... Karan.”

He moved over, sitting on the other end of the bed; Marty’s hyperventilating had progressed into deep, sharp breathing, filled with fear. “I’m sorry I was so rude to you this morning, I don’t know if you remember, at the diner. I was having a rough start, and... You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?” George rambled.

“No!” Marty said quickly, “fine! No, good, fine!”

George reached out a hand; Marty shuffled backwards on the bed.

“That’s a big bruise you have there,” George said.

“Ah,” Marty said, because the expanse of bed had suddenly run out, and she’d toppled onto the floor.

The furniture in the room shook when she hit the carpet, and George winced, before wincing even harder at the voice from downstairs: “George,” hollered a shrill voice, “are you up there?”

 “O-oh my god, it’s my mother!” George stammered, shooting up from off the bed as though it was electrically charged. He stumbled over to the dresser that Marty’s jackets and t-shirt were hanging over. They were rapidly launched towards her. “Quick - put your shirt back on!”

Marty, catching her t-shirt with one hand and trying to replace the duvet with her other, watched in stunned silence. George lunged for the bedroom door, taking one last second to look Marty up and down in her sports bra and jeans, and then closed it.

She shuddered, and pulled her shirt over her head.

 

* * *

 

 

“So, tell me, Marty,” said Grandma Sylvia (except she wasn’t Grandma Sylvia, not quite yet). “How long have you been in port?”

“Excuse me?”

“Ooh, you’re a new face in town, and so I guessed your father’s a sailor... That’s why you’re wearing that life preserver!”

“Uh, actually, I’m...” Marty began, trying to think of a credible lie. “...A coast guard?”

Sylvia seemed to buy it with unbridled enthusiasm, or was at least very good at hiding that she thought it was bullshit. “Oh, you must be visiting family! I bet they’re so proud... Artie! Artie, sweetheart, here’s the young girl that George brought inside, and she’s alright, thank god.”

Whereas the Grandma Sylvia of thirty years ago was fairly similar to the one Marty knew – though she was definitely thinner, she still spoke in rambling sentences, and breezed through every action with ease – Grandpa Artie was starkly different to Marty’s memory. Grandpa Artie had had thick, white hair, and had always worn a classic fedora, even in the height of summer. Grandpa Artie had once refused to take a seven-year-old Marty to the zoo. Grandpa Artie hadn’t liked hugs, or small children, or silly dreams, and yet Marty still felt a small ache in the pit of her stomach when she thought about the last time she’d seen him. His back had been turned; he’d closed the screen door behind him as he and Grandma Sylvia had left after their Easter lunch, the spring before her brother Dave had graduated high school.

“What were you doing lying in the middle of the street, a kid your age?” Artie demanded. He was trying to hook up something around the back of the television set, and waved a screwdriver to punctuate his words.

Marty tried to think of something under his piercing stare. Luckily for him, Sylvia interrupted. “Don’t pay _any_ attention to him, he’s in one of his moods,” she laughed, guiding Marty by the shoulders to the dining room. “Artie, quit fiddling with that thing and come in here to dinner... Now, let’s see.”

She busied herself with a variety of rather gaudy serving utensils, and whilst George set mats onto the table, Marty wandered over to the doorway. A noncommittal grunt came from behind the television set in the hallway. She leant over to peer at Artie’s work on the television set, exchanging brief smiles with a sighing Sylvia, and squinted at the ports and leads coming out of the back of it.

“...Any way I can help?” tried Marty.

“I doubt it,” Artie huffed. For a man so softly-spoken, he was still as harsh and blunt as Marty remembered. Not as shy and awkward as Dad, but quiet. Kept to himself.

“You hooking up a stereo system?” Marty said. She jabbed a hand towards the gap in the dining room where perhaps the television set should have been, which had an oblong speaker on either side, like booming, surround-sound skyscrapers.

Artie slowly looked up from his screwdriver. “Yeah.”

“And is that the converter? For extra ports and stuff? Looks pretty neat.”

“It’ll be quite tidy, yes,” said Artie tartly.

Marty rubbed the back of her neck. “Would you like some help getting it back over there?”

Artie didn’t answer her. He finished installing the converter to the back of the television, then put down his screwdriver. “George!” he called.

Like a confused golden retriever, George poked his head around the doorframe. “Put down that spoon and _come and help me_ ,” Artie snorted. Marty couldn’t be bothered to argue; she knew it was a lost cause, even though she could have lugged that set over with probably more ease that her scrawny father could.

To her surprise, however, when all was in its place, Artie waved George away and took a step back from the entertainment unit.

She raised an eyebrow at Artie.

Artie nodded. _Go on, then_.

“Artie! Leave that set alone and come and eat your dinner!”

“Just a second, darling,” he said, nodding again, more forcefully, at the mass of wires in front of the two.

Okay. Marty crouched and leant around the back of the TV. Red, white, in, out, composite? No, component. Probably. It took her less than thirty seconds to plug the necessary cables into the right ports; what was complex in 1985 came naturally to a girl from 2015.

“All done,” she said, rising to her feet. “Wanna try?”

Artie made a ‘hm’ sound, flicked the set on, and stared, _hard_. An animated version of _20,000 Leagues Under The Sea_ was playing, complete with ridiculous European accents, and Marty couldn’t help but chuckle a little. Artie folded his arms and frowned instead.

“How’d you _do_ that?!” George gaped.

“Easy,” Marty shrugging, “I used to mess with those all the time when I was a little kid.”

“But that sound system’s so _recent_ \--”

“Good job there, missy,” Artie interrupted. If Marty knew any better, she would have even thought he looked impressed.

Sylvia returned to the dining room from her kitchen and beamed. “Oh, _Artie_ , take your hat off... Do you like meatloaf, kiddo?” she asked, gliding around the table.

“Yeah, plenty, thanks...”

“Sit, uh, sit here, Marty,” George said, pulling out the chair next to him. It was unsettling, but Marty didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter.

“Look at her go!” Artie said, his wife steering him into a dining chair, “now we can watch TV like it’s happening all around us!”

“It just seems _louder_ to me, sweetheart...”

“It’s not on _every_ channel, Sylvia, it’s only when it’s available...”

“It’s our first proper speaker system,” George said, picking up his knife and fork, “Dad just picked it up t-today. Have, uh, have your folks got one yet?”

“Yeah,” said Marty without thinking, “we’ve had a home cinema setup for a couple of years now.”

George gaped. “You must be rich!”

“Oh, kiddo, she’s teasing you!” Sylvia laughed. “Nobody’s got a _home cinema system_.”

Marty laughed along nervously.

What she wasn’t expecting, however, was for Artie to pipe up. “You know, Marty, you look so familiar.” He pushed a piece of meatloaf around his plate, frowning: “do I know your father?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught George staring at her, waiting for a response. When she turned to face him, he quickly looked away and turned slightly pink.

“Yeah,” she said weakly, “I think maybe you do.”

“Oh, then I’d like to give your mother a call,” said Sylvia. “I don’t want her to worry about you.”

“You can’t!” said Marty quickly. “Nobody’s home.”

“Oh,” said Sylvia.

“....Yet,” she added, glancing at George again. The tips of his ears turned red.

“Oh,” repeated Sylvia. She looked perplexed, but not put out.

“Hey,” Marty said hastily, “do you know where Riverside Drive is?”

“It’s uh, other end of town. A block past Maple. East end,” said Artie.

“A block past Maple, that’s, uh...” She tried to visualise it, squinting with concentration. “That’s Millennium Drive.”

“What the hell’s Millennium Drive?”

Marty was saved by Sylvia’s quick interjection. Or, perhaps not: “Artie, darlin’? With Marty’s parents outta town, don’t you think she ought to stay the night? After her bird watching accident, I think she’s our responsibility.”

“Ah, gee,” said Marty nervously, “I don’t know--”

“Sh-she could stay in my room!” said George.

She was up like a shot, nearly knocking over her dining chair in the process – George’s hand brushing against her leg felt like a third-degree burn. “I gotta go!” she squeaked. “I, uh, I gotta go—Thanks very much, it was wonderful, you were all great.”

The family of three, forks loaded with meatloaf halfway to their mouths, looked beyond puzzled as Marty darted for the door. “See you all later,” she said, lunging for the latch. And then, as a slight afterthought: “... _much_ later.”

The door clicked shut.

Sylvia paused, in thought. “She’s a very strange young lady,” she said, bemused.

“She’s an idiot,” huffed Artie, shovelling food into his mouth. “It comes from upbringing – her parents are probably idiots too. Weak father and a wayward mother... George,” he said seriously, “if you ever have a kid like that, I’ll disown you.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Ah, yeah, well... I might have, sort of, run into my parents,” Marty said, hoping that it really wasn’t that bad.

1640 Riverside Drive didn’t exist in Marty’s present day. It was a commercial lot, dominated by a Burger King and several parking spaces.

Tucked away in the corner of 1985’s Riverside Drive was Doc Brown’s garage. And the first thing that Marty noticed was that it was home to a beautiful car. Not Doc’s home, with the automatic breakfast routine and the wall of clocks; a home for a car, as it should have been.

Right around the corner was the most enormous house Marty had ever seen, and it was labelled with the number 1640. She had to jog up to the door, there was that much of a stretch of driveway, and _paved_ driveway, might she add, it was all perfectly arranged brickwork, clean and free of weeds.

Marty approached the ornate front door, rapped on it five times (all on the same beat), and stood back, admiring the night time scene with its gentle cricket soundtrack.

The door opened a crack – and then quickly slammed again. Marty whipped around just in time to spot some wild eyes before the door had banged shut.

 _Knock, kno_ \--

It opened on her hand: “Doc?” she asked.

Doc was  top-heavy with metal and straps, attaching a huge steel dome to her head. “Don’t say a word!” she hissed, and seized Marty’s shoulders, dragging her inside.

“Doc!” Marty protested, being hauled into a living room with singed carpets.

“I don’t want to know your name,” Doc began, parking them in front of a metal box housing all sorts of dials and lights. A tiny puppy was sat obediently in front of it, complete with a dog-sized version of the metal bonnet Doc was wearing.“I don’t want to know anything about you!”

“Listen, Doc--”

“Quiet!” Doc insisted.

“Doc, _Doc_ , hey--”

“--don’t tell me _anything_ \--”

“--it’s me, Marty, you gotta help--”

“--quiet, _quiet_!” Doc said, punctuating her words by sticking a sucker to Marty’s forehead. “I’m gonna read your thoughts.”

Marty watched helplessly as Doc adjusted her metal hat. “Let’s see now,” she muttered. “...You’ve come here from a great distance.”

“Yeah!” Marty yelped. “Exactly!”

“Don’t tell me,” Doc said, waving her arms to cut the teenager off. “Uh... You want me to buy a subscription to _The Saturday Evening Post_?”

“...No.”

Doc was undeterred. “Not a word, not a word now! Uh.... donations... You want me to make a donation to the Coast Guard Youth Auxiliary?”

Marty had had enough of being patient.

“Doc,” she said slowly, yanking at the sucker. It came off her forehead with a distinct _pop_. “I’m from the _future_. I came here in a time machine that _you_ invented. Now I need your help to get back to the year _two thousand and fifteen._ ”

Doc stared, and then shook her head: “My God....”

 _Finally_. About time, too. It had sure taken long enough to get Doc’s scientific mania out of the way.

The scientist edged forwards, clapping her hands to Marty’s arms.“Do you know what this means?” she asked, a smile beginning to curl at the corners of her lips. Marty could think of several answers to this question; it means Jennifer and her could go to watch scary movies together at the time they were released to cinemas. It means they could take trips to see locations and monuments in their own timeframe – history would come alive. It means that Doc succeeded after thirty years of hard work, and created the single defining invention of the twenty first century.

“It means,” Doc said, gritting her teeth and pulling at the metal bonnet, “ _that this damn thing doesn’t work at all_!”

She strode into the open area of the living room, cursing and babbling to herself, and Marty had to jog to keep up. “Doc,” she pleaded, “you gotta help me! You’re the only one who knows how your time machine works.”

“Time machine?”

Doc’s voice dropped to a whisper; her hand crept up to a gash above her eyebrow, where the surrounding skin was beginning to turn purple. “I haven’t invented any time machine,” she murmured.

“Okay, alright,” Marty said, because that approach clearly wasn’t working in her favour. She fumbled for her shitty red wallet and ripped open the velcro: “I’ll prove it to you. Look at my driver’s license – _expires twenty seventeen_. Look at my birthday, for crying out loud! I-I haven’t even been born yet!”

Doc stared at the mechanics of her machine, absently turning them over in her hands. Marty, in a similar vein, tried with all her might to push down the rising dread of the realisation that _technically_ , _she didn’t exist yet._

“And,” she said quickly, pulling a photo of her siblings out of the pocket as it caught her eye. “Look at this picture. It’s my brother, my sister, and me. Look at her _sweatshirt_ , Doc. Class of twenty fourteen?”

Doc, with a pair of tongs, gingerly examined the evidence. “Pretty mediocre photographic fakery,” she concluded. “They cut off your brother’s hair.”

Marty was getting nowhere, fast. “I’m telling you the truth, Doc, you gotta believe me!” she said desperately.

“Then tell me _, o person of the future_ ,” Doc challenged, advancing on her. “Who’s President of the United States in twenty fifteen?”

“Barack Obama,” Marty said confidently.

“ _Barack Obama_?!” Doc spluttered, “do we name men after features of the armed forces in the future? You must be very proud of Vice President _Colt_.” She gathered up the blueprints for the mind-reading machine, and headed for the front door: “and First Lady _Beretta_ , I suppose!”

“Whoa, wait, _Doc_ ,” Marty said miserably, chasing after her. The air was cold – October was creeping in – and it rushed across her cheeks as she followed the scientist to her garage.

“And Mr. _Garrison_ must be secretary of the Treasury!”

“Look, you gotta listen to me,” Marty said, grabbing at the back of her lab coat when she fumbled for the garage door.

“I got enough practical jokes for one evening,” Doc said from the doorframe, “good _night_ , future boy!”

And the door slammed in her face.

That was _it_. Future boy? Future _boy_? Doc didn’t even recognise her!

“No, wait, Doc,” she said, knowing she had some proof _somewhere_ , and she just had to _find_ it, so she hammered out the rhythm of her brain with her palms on the closed door, “the bruise! The bruise on your head, I know how that happened - you told me the whole story! You were standing on your toilet and you were hanging a clock, and you fell, and you hit your head on the sink, and that's when you came up with the idea for the _flux capacitor_ , which...”

She breathed in.

“Is... what makes time travel... possible.”

She trailed off, and turned away from the door.

It was useless. She was stuck here. Stuck here with an iPod and a hazmat suit and a shitty car from the eighties, which she couldn’t even _use_.

Doc appeared with a crash of the opening door, with wide eyes and a drained face.

“And I’m a _girl_ , by the way,” Marty added.

 

* * *

 

 

Unsurprisingly, the drive back to Lyon Estates – or what was the beginning of it – was a lot shorter than the walk Marty had undertaken that morning. Doc drove a beautiful ’48 Packard, and it ran like an absolute dream.

“There’s something wrong with the starter,” she said, climbing out and wandering over to the rear of the Lyon Estates sign, “so I hid it. It’s here...”

Under the cover of darkness, their flashlights were like spotlights, swinging around dizzily as the two removed the branches from the top of the time machine. There it was. The DeLorean.

“After I fell off my toilet,” Doc started – she patted her breast pocket and drew out a scrap piece of paper – “I drew this.”

Marty shone her torch towards it. It was a circle with three prongs coming out of it, surrounded by equations and algebra. “The flux capacitor,” she confirmed. Opening the driver’s side door, she shone her torch towards the panel at the back and turned the key, and watched as Doc’s eyes and the real-life flux capacitor lit up simultaneously.

The older woman fell to her knees. Marty hadn’t ever seen an adult in their mid-thirties tear up before, not even her mother, and it was somewhat touching that Doc was so moved. “It works!” she said shakily, laughing, “ _it works_!” And, standing up, she grabbed Marty by the supposed ‘life preserver’ and stared into her face. “I actually invent something that _works_!”

“Bet your ass it works,” replied Marty.

They stood there for a moment, just the two of them, holding onto each others’ arms. In those couple of seconds, it all registered – the jubilance, the horror, the sheer miracle it was that they’d manipulated time to their wills.

“Somehow we’ve got to sneak this back to my laboratory,” said Doc, still staring at the car. In a split second, she went back to her old, intense self, not unlike her present-day self; grabbing Marty by the zip of her orange vest again, her face became stony with determination.

“We’ve gotta get you _home_!”

\---

“Doc, do you have a seventy five ohm matching transformer?”

Doc looked up from her rummaging: “what?” she asked blankly.

Marty, who had been attempting to connect Doc’s camera to the television set in the lab, hit some garbage bit of plastic she’d uncovered against the garage beams. “Right,” she remembered. “Baluns. They’ve only just been invented.”

She continued with her efforts to hook up the video camera so they could watch the experiment properly; Doc, however, had recovered some sort of metal stick looking equipment, and was tapping the DeLorean with it so she could hear it ring. “I knew it,” she muttered, “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.”

The suitcase on the bonnet had caught her eye; it was present day Doc’s belongings, which had been slung in the back seat before everything had gone to shit. “So,” past-Doc said. “These are my personal belongings, huh?”

“Yeah,” Marty said. She was trying to keep the lump in her throat from evolving into anything else, like tears.

“What’s _this_ thing?” Doc said incredulously, pulling out a grey tablet by its corner.

“Oh, that?” Marty said, “that’s a Kindle. It’s an e-reader, you download books onto it.”

“An _e-reader_?” Doc said, sceptical. She shook her head with bewilderment. “Don’t they have _actual_ books in the future?”

“Huh, yeah... That argument gets thrown around a lot.”

“And look at these underpants! They’re all made of cotton!” Doc exclaimed. Man, Marty did _not_ wanna see the Doc’s undies. “I thought for sure we’d all be wearing disposable paper garments by twenty fifteen!”

“Right, okay, Doc,” Marty interjected, “it’s ready, c’mere.” Doc wandered over to the TV – should she have been letting the past version look at the future version’s stuff?

Whatever. It was too late now.

She pressed play on the camera - a grainy version of present-day Doc Brown appeared onscreen, garbed in hazmat suit and with stopwatch in hand, babbling “never mind that, never mind that now, never mind that, never mind...”

Marty’s heart jumped within her chest. It was awful to think that the whole debacle had transpired _last night_.

“Why,” cried Doc, bounding over to the TV, “that’s me! Look at me, I’m an old woman!”

“Good evening, I’m Doctor Emma Brown, I’m standing here in the parking lot of--”

Doc’s eyes were as wide as saucers. “Thank goodness I still suit white hair!” she exclaimed. “Whatever is this thing I’m wearing?”

“Uh, well, this is your radiation suit,” said Marty.

Confusion momentarily furrowed her brow. “Radiation suit? But the Cold War’s on its way out... Ah, never mind, I don’t want to know.”

Marty hastily pushed the play button on the video camera. “Woah, this is it. This is the part, coming up, Doc.”

“No, no,” said TV Doc. “This sucker's electrical. But I need a nuclear reaction to generate the one point twenty one gigawatts of--”

“What did I just say?!” Doc demanded.

Marty rewound the footage. “--I need a nuclear reaction to generate the one point twenty one gigawatts of electricity that I need--“

“ _One point twenty one gigawatts?!_ ” Doc shrieked. She stumbled backwards, wrought almost with fright, wringing her hands and then running them through her hair – “ _one point twenty one gigawatts,_ ” she whispered, the shock stripping her vocals entirely. Her back met the laboratory door as she lurched about the room. “Great Scott!” she finished. Doc lunged for the door handle, and, finally, was gone.

Marty sprinted around the DeLorean and followed after her. “What.....? What the _hell_ is a gigawatt?!”

She found the scientist in the sitting room of the main house, muttering to herself distraughtly: “One point twenty one gigawatts... How could I have been so _careless_? Tom,” she said, grabbing a large framed photo of Edison, “how am I going to generate that kind of power? It can’t be done! It _can’t_!”

“Doc,” Marty said breathlessly, interrupting the monologue. “All we need is a little plutonium...”

“Hah!” Doc scoffed. She returned the framed portrait of Edison to a gap amidst a portrait wall -  Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, and Einstein all stared down at the unfolding scene. “I’m sure that in twenty fifteen, plutonium is available in every corner drug store! But in nineteen eighty five, _it’s a little hard to come by_! Marty,” she said, holding the girl by the shoulders, “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’re stuck here!”

“Woah, Doc,” Marty said. The two of them collapsed on opposing arm chair. Her stomach was lurching; her whole body, it seemed, was suddenly turbulent with panic. “S... stuck here? I can’t be stuck here! I got a life in twenty fifteen! I got someone waiting for me!”

“Are they pretty?” asked Doc, momentarily removing her face from her hands.

“Doc,” Marty breathed, “they’re _beautiful_. They’re crazy about me. Look at this--” she patted her chest pocket for the paper Jennifer had scrawled her temporary number onto – “look at what they wrote here, Doc. That says it all.”

Doc looked convinced. But she also looked resigned.

“Doc,” Marty said seriously, “you’re my only hope.”

“Marty, I’m sorry,” Doc began, and Marty stood up, heading towards the desk, as though being further from the source of the apology would make it sting less. “The only power source capable of generating one point twenty one gigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning.”

Marty turned on her heel so quickly that she nearly slipped. “What did you say?!”

“A bolt of lightning,” Doc repeated. She remained hopeless: “unfortunately, you never know when or where it’s ever going to strike.”

The teenager grinned, flipped over the note from Jennifer, and struck it with the back of her hand. “We do now,” she said.

Doc snatched the sheet from her grasp and examined its contents – SAVE THE CLOCK TOWER had never seemed so sweet a phrase. The Doc shot up from her seat. “This is it,” she said through her teeth, “ _this_ is the answer... It say here that a bolt of lightning is going to strike the clock tower at precisely ten oh four PM, next Saturday night!”

There was a tense pause as Doc struggled to find the words, her eyes narrowed in thought.

“If we could,” she started.

No, not quite.

“If we could somehow... harness... this lightning, channel it into the flux capacitor... It just might work...! Next Saturday night,” she crowed, “we're sending you _back to the future_!”

“Okay, alright!” Marty celebrated, slapping a hand onto Doc’s back, “Saturday’s good, Saturday’s _good_ , I could spend a week in nineteen eighty five. I could hang out, you could show me around--”

“Marty,” said Doc gravely. “That’s completely out of the question. You must not leave this house! You must not see anybody, or talk to anybody! Anything you do could have serious repercussions on future events! Do you understand?”

“Yeeeee-ah,” Marty blagged. “Sure. Okay.”

“ _Marty_.”

Oh shit.

“Have you interacted with anybody else today besides me?”

“Ah, yeah, well... I might have, sort of, run into my parents,” Marty said, hoping that it really wasn’t that bad.

“Great Scott,” swore Doc, “let me see that photograph again of your brother!”

The shitty velcro wallet re-emerged. Doc didn’t have to squint at the quality this time.

“Just as I thought – this proves my theory. Look at your brother!”

Marty leant in. “His head’s gone,” she said, surprised. “It’s like... It’s like he’s been erased.”

“Erased _from existence_ ,” said the ever-dramatic Doc.

 

* * *

 

 

The Hill Valley High School of thirty years prior was definitely a prettier sight than what it looked like in Marty’s time. _Wow_ , she thought to herself, seeing cream walls free from scratchings, and a distinct lack of elaborate graffiti . _They really cleaned this place up... Looks brand new._

She’d been dressed in some terrible eighties outfit – barely-worn jeans that belonged to Doc, rolled up at the ends, to both emulate that perfect eighties look _and_ because Marty was a five-foot-four shorthouse. They’d dug out some Nike sneakers in her size from a Goodwill, and a dreadful polo shirt which she’d tucked into her jeans. The oversized green jacket was also Doc’s.

It was helpful, to be honest, having a tall scientist friend.

“Now remember,” Doc was saying. She took Marty by the arm and led her towards the school. “According to my theory, you interfered with your parents’ first meeting. They don’t meet, they don’t fall in love, they won’t get married and they won’t have kids! That’s why your older brother’s disappearing from the photograph. Your older sister will follow, and unless you repair the damage, _you’ll_ be next!”

“That sounds pretty heavy,” Marty muttered.

“Weight has nothing to do with it.”

The two made their way into the school corridors, glancing in each classroom window as they passed, in an attempt to track down either Lorraine or George. “Doc,” Marty whispered, as they passed the class she’d last had detention in, “Doc, there she is! Right there, second row.”

And there Lorraine was, wearing bright leggings and a pullover-shirt combo, leaning over to check the test paper of the guy sitting on her left. It must have been some kind of make-up test to have been scheduled for first thing in the morning – whatever it was, her mother in the future had obviously not been as honest about her good-girl past as she should have been.

“Shit! She’s cheating!” Marty breathed.

“So?” Doc whispered back.

She had a point, but... “Well,” Marty said uncomfortably, “she’s my mom.”

Doc patted her on the back reassuringly. Above them, the end-of-lesson bell’s shrill cry rang out; as Lorraine went by with her friends, Marty overheard her saying “I got an F anyway!”

She wanted to stare. Lorraine was... well, she was _thin_. Jesus, what had those thirty years done to her? Her face was round and radiant, she was laughing, she looked kind of quiet and shy but with an air of confidence, as though she could fight back if she needed to.

Marty wandered over to where they were getting their books from their lockers. “Hey,” she said. The dumb eighties’ outfit she was wearing suddenly made her feel very self-conscious, so she stuck her hands in the coat pockets: “are you Lorraine, uh, Baines?”

“Yeah,” said Lorraine, “who’s asking?”

Marty swallowed, preparing the lie. “Uh... My name’s Marty. The office told me I could get a copy of your class schedule.”

“Oh! You must be new!” Lorraine said, digging in her locker, “here, I have it memorised, so you can give it back to me tomorrow. This is Babs,” she said, gesturing to the brunette girl she was with, “and Betty,” she added, gesturing to the blond.

“Nice to meet you,” Marty said. “Listen, uh... Have you seen a kid about yay high, dark hair, wanders around with a notebook?”

“No,” said Lorraine blankly, “I’ve not seen anyone like that, sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Marty said, disappointed, “thanks for your help, I’ll see ya around.”

“No problem!” her mother said, and god, it was weird, seeing her look so _young_. She guessed that was what alcohol and regret would do to a woman – it had just festered within her until she’d withered away.

Marty returned to Doc. “No sign of him yet,” she reported.

“There’s a couple classes just been let out,” Doc replied, “which one’s your pop?”

“That’s him.” Marty scanned the crowd of kids lining the corridor, and sighed as she picked out the weediest disappointment amongst them.

“Okay, okay,” George was saying, as other guys his age kicked him in the ass as they went by. Marty recognised some of them as being with Biff when they’d confronted her father in Lou’s Cafe. “Ha, ha, very funny, you guys are being real mature--”

He turned around to face his tormentors, revealing a ‘KICK ME’ sign stuck to his back. “Maybe you were adopted,” Doc suggested.

More people went by and kicked George as they passed – he whirled around, staring down his attackers, and dropped his books as a particularly hard kick came his way.

“McFly!” barked the headmaster. Marty flinched.

“Strickland,” she told Doc, “Jesus, didn’t that guy _ever_ have hair?”

“You’re a slacker!” he was saying to George, tearing up the ‘KICK ME’ sign, “do you want to be a slacker for the rest of your life?”

“What did your mother ever see in that kid?” Doc asked pointedly.

Marty had to shrug: “I don’t know,” she whined, “I guess she felt sorry for him ‘cos her dad hit him with the car... nearly hit _me_ with the car,” she realised, reaching to touch the lump on the back of her head, “oh god, Dad knocked me out and took me to Grandma Sylvia’s house.”

“It’s the Florence Nightingale effect,” Doc said gravely. “It happens in hospitals when nurses fall in love with their patients.” She nudged Marty in the side, glancing at George, who was trying in vain to collect his books and papers together. “Go to it, kid.”

Marty took a deep breath, and made her way over, being sure to greet him with a handful of his books and a cheery “hey! George!”

“ _Donna_!”

George’s face had lit up like a birthday cake, so she tacked on a safer “buddy! I have been looking _all over_ for you...”

She took his shoulder – again, a safer move – and starting walking with him down the corridor. “Remember me? The gal you knocked out the other day?”

“O-oh, yeah,” George breathed.

“There’s somebody I’d like you to meet,” Marty said quickly, before anything could escalate.

She’d steered him over to where Lorraine and her two friends were stood, digging through their lockers and gossiping together. “Lorraine?” Marty asked.

“Oh, Marty!” she smiled.

“I’d like you to meet my good friend, George McFly,” she said, elbowing George in the side.

“It’s really a pleasure to meet you,” she said, but to Marty’s vehement displeasure, George had looped their arms together.

“And to you,” he said, being as polite as ever. Marty wanted to punch him.

“W-well,” Marty bluffed, “I just wanted to say that if you want to hang out at any time, George and I are _good friends_ and you’ll be able to find me where he is in school times, o-okay?”

“Sure!” Lorraine said brightly. She was totally oblivious to any ulterior motives. “I’ll see you later, Marty!”

Lorraine, Babs, and Betty closed their lockers and strode away together, talking animatedly about a school dance; Marty removed her arm from George’s.

“How’s your head?” he asked.

Marty ducked as he reached out to touch it. “Pounding,” she muttered.

“I’ve been so worried about you ever since you ran off the other night. Are you okay?” he asked, and was thankfully, god, _so thankfully_ , interrupted by the school bell ringing above them. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I have to go.”

As he whirled around the corner of the corridor, just past where Doc had been observing the whole saga, he glanced backwards over his shoulder and nearly tripped himself up. Marty wanted to bang her head against the wall.

“Doc, he barely even looked at her!”

Doc’s footsteps were loud in the suddenly empty hallway: “this is more serious than I thought,” she said, her voice echoing. “Apparently your father is amorously infatuated with _you_ instead of your mother!”

“Whoa, wait a minute, Doc.” This was too much. On top of the nineteen eighty five thing, this was just... too much. “Are you telling me that my father,” she said slowly, “has got the hots for me?”

“Precisely!” Doc said immediately, and Marty wished that there had been more of a pause, that the conclusion the scientist had reached was less certain than it had been. Marty didn’t know _how_ to deal with guys. Like, at all. They’d never been interested or Jennifer had shut them down by being around, because without being out at school, the duo just looked like a guy and a girl hanging out together.

Jesus _Christ_.

“This is heavy,” she said, because there wasn’t much else to add.

“There’s that word again – heavy,” said Doc absently, murmuring to herself. “Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth’s gravitational pull...?”

“What?” said Marty.

She seemed to snap out of it. Gesturing animatedly, Doc explained her plan: “the only way we’re going to get those two to successfully meet is if they're alone together. So you've got to get your father and mother to interact at some sort of social-”

“What, you mean like a date?”

“Right!” said Doc.

“What kind of date?” Marty despaired, “I don't know, what do kids _do_ in the eighties?”

Marty came from a life where Tinder and instant messaging organised this all. What was she supposed to do, initiate letter writing between them? It wasn’t like she could set up a WhatsApp group for them, for crying out loud.

“Well, they're _your_ parents, you must know them,” Doc reasoned. “What are their common interests? What do they like to do together?”

And Marty suddenly realised that her parents had never been on a date. Not whilst Marty had been alive.

“...Nothing.”

As usual, Doc had the answer. “Look! There’s a rhythmic ceremonial ritual coming up!” she cried, jabbing at a huge blue poster on the corridor wall.

“Of course,” Marty crowed, “the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance! They're supposed to go to this, that's where they kiss for the first time!”

“Alright, kid,” Doc said. “You stick to your father like glue, and make _sure_ he takes her to the dance!”

Marty thought about shirts on top of reader’s digest shelves, and wanted to cry. This was going to be one of those tasks which was easier said than done.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marty picks her fights unwisely.

“George! Buddy!”

Marty, crashing down on the cafeteria chair opposite her father, had discovered him eating alone. His nose was buried in his notebook once again.

“Remember that girl I introduced you to? Lorraine?”

George looked up wordlessly, following Marty’s gaze – it did seem like he was into her, because he stared for a good few seconds. Awesome. There must have been _something_ there.

She was distracted by the papers surrounding the notebook. “What are you writing?” she asked, genuinely curious.

“Uh... stories,” George said. He looked embarrassed, but he waved his arms to try to communicate the scope of his works: “science fiction stories, about, uh, visitors. Coming down to Earth. From other planets...”

“Get outta town!” Marty said, delighted, “I didn’t know you did anything _creative_! Let me read some!”

“Oh, no, no, no, no,” George said. He pulled his pages closer to him, protective over his scrawling. “I never, I never let anybody read my stories.”

Marty’s face fell. “...Why not?”

“Well... What if they didn’t like them? What if they told me I was no good?” He looked as though he was about to say something else, but stopped, and returned to his current paragraph. “I guess that would be pretty hard for someone to understand.”

Marty’s chest tightened. “Uh, no,” she said, suddenly finding the table very interesting, “no. Not hard at all.”

George went back to his scribbling.

“I’ll, uh,” Marty sighed. “I’ll catch you later, George.”

George didn’t say goodbye; Marty stood up, scanned the room for her mother’s friends, and weaved her way through the seats to get to their table.

“Oh, hi Marty!” Lorraine said. Babs and Betty smiled at his arrival. “You can sit here if you like!”

“Hey, Lorraine!” Marty said, with renewed enthusiasm, “I brought back your planner, and uh, I’ve got a message to deliver for you.”

Lorraine made some space for Marty to sit down at their table, and leant forwards to listen to her. “Now, George,” Marty told her, “he - he really likes you. He told me, to tell _you,_ that he wants you to go to the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance with him.”

Lorraine smiled painfully: “well, that’s awfully nice of him,” she said, “but why doesn’t he come over here and ask me himself?”

Ah, shit. “He, uh. He’s not sure if he could take it if you said no. He’s _really_ into you.”

Lorraine’s expression softened. “Oh!”

“So maybe if _you_ were to ask _him_ \--” Marty began, but was interrupted by the sound of screeching chairs behind her.

“Sorry, little lady,” came the voice above her shoulder, “but I think Lorraine would rather go with someone else.”

 _Oh, Jesus Christ,_ Marty thought, and turned around, with little surprise, to see Biff and his gang.

“Shove off, Biff,” Lorraine said, focusing intently on her lunch.

“C’mon Lorraine,” Biff said, shifting closer in his chair so his chest was against her back, “you know you want it, you know you want _me_ to give it to you...”

_Crack._

Alright, Mom!

“Shut your filthy mouth!” Lorraine said, as Biff retracted his hand to hold it to his freshly-slapped face. “I’m not that kinda girl.”

Biff’s friends let out a low _ooooooh_ , and Biff scowled viciously. He grabbed her by the arms: “well, maybe you are, and you just don’t know it yet,” he spat.

“Get your meat hooks offa me!” Lorraine spat back, and Marty stood up so quickly that she nearly upended the table.

“You heard her!” she said, pulling Biff up by the collar so that he was standing, too. “She _said_ , get your _meat hooks_ \--”

Ah. Biff was quite a few inches taller than Marty was.

“--ah,” she said, straightening his collar, “off. Please.”

Biff did not look amused in the slightest. He’d been grabbing at Lorraine – who’s to say he wasn’t going to deck Marty?

“What’s it to you, butthead?” he said, shoving Marty backwards. She tried to keep her cool, she really did, but when he pushed her _again_ and started to growl: “y’know, you’ve been _looking_ for a fight--!”, she really lost it.

Marty shoved him back. A few shouts of ‘fight!’ echoed throughout the cafeteria, and they had fists raised and collars grabbed when Strickland appeared from thin air.

Biff grinned at him, tongue in cheek, and straightened out Marty’s collar like she’d done to him moments earlier. The blood was pounding in her ears. “Since you’re new here... I’m gonna cut you a break... Today,” he reasoned. The only word Marty could coherent conjure to mind in this moment was ‘ _tool’_. “So why don’t you make like a tree, and get outta here.”

Marty tucked her polo shirt back in, and watched him turn his broad back on the whole situation; Strickland, from his glaring patrol, had been distracted by someone throwing a paper airplane at him. George had vacated his spot, it seemed, as soon as the trouble had started. _Damn._

“Thanks,” said a voice behind her, and she turned to see Lorraine looking very, very small. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yeah, I did,” Marty said bashfully, “he was being a total dick.”

“Well, thanks, Marty,” she said, “I really owe you one.”

Marty felt terrible.

She managed to catch George at the end of the school day, a few blocks from his house; “hey George,” she said, jogging to catch up with him, “remember Lorraine Baines? The girl I introduced you to?”

“What about her?” he asked. They were turning onto Sycamore and 2nd now – she’d have to be quick to avoid being invited inside. Grandma and Grandpa McFly probably wouldn’t appreciate seeing the strange girl who’d ran out on dinner again.

“She’d really like for you to ask her to the dance this Saturday,” Marty said, “and if you don’t do it, I’m going to regret it for the rest of my _life._ ”

George winced: “I can’t go to the dance,” he whined, in a way reminiscent of Marty’s complaining, “I’ll miss the only rerun of my favourite television program, The Twilight Zone.”

“Yeah, but George,” Marty pleaded. They were outside the McFly residence now – she’d have to speed this up. “Lorraine _wants_ to go with you. Give her a break!”

“Look, I'm just not ready to ask Lorraine out to the dance,” George said. “and not you, nor anybody else on this planet is gonna make me change my mind!”

And with that, he darted inside, within the safety of his family’s four walls.

Marty, however, had had a fantastic idea. She checked the photo of herself and her siblings – Dave was now just a pair of thighs. “The Twilight Zone...?” she murmured.

 

* * *

 

 

Marty’s iPhone, which she’d turned off since the accidental alarm incident in Lou’s Cafe, was on eight per cent battery and ready to be put to use. Gingerly, from within the bright yellow radiation suit, she eased the earbuds she’d found tangled in the pocket of her jeans into George’s ears.

It was one twenty two AM in the McFly house, and Marty, standing above George’s bed, was thankful that she knew he was a heavy sleeper beforehand.

She pressed play. ‘ _warmjet.wav’_ began blaring, and Marty was pretty sure from George’s reaction that full-volume vaporwave was the best idea she’d ever had.

Once she had his attention, she pressed pause.

“Who are you?!” George whimpered.

“Silence, Earthling!” she boomed, the radiation helmet muffling her voice. Marty felt powerful, and very pleased with herself. “My name is Megamind. I'm an extra-terrestrial from the planet Jakku!”

“Mom! Dad!” George called. Marty hit him around the face with the back of Doc’s Kindle.

“Silence! My X-Files will blacklist and vaporise you if you do not obey me!”

“Okay! Okay!” George said, holding the right side of his face, “I surrender. I surrender.”

This was too easy. “You, George McFly, have created a rift in the space-time continuum!” Marty said, hoping that the science-y words would catch George’s attention. “A glitch! In the Matrix!”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I, I didn’t mean it...”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it, George,” Marty said gravely. She held out the Kindle to him, which had an illustration of a couple dancing displayed on it – Marty had scanned through the existing PDFs and found the perfect image to drive home her point. “The Men in Black hereby command you to take the female unit known as Baines, Lorraine to the place called Hill Valley High School exactly four Earth cycles from now.”George reached out to touch the Kindle, and Marty smacked his hand away with it: “That’s this Saturday night, George,” she warned.

“You mean you want me to take Lorraine to the dance.”

“Affirmative...”

“I... I don’t know if I can do that,” George said. Marty raised the Kindle again threateningly, hoping that another hit wouldn’t break it – for extra effect, she played some more of the vaporwave. George cowered. “Okay, okay, alright, I’ll do it, I’ll take Lorraine to the dance, just please!”

“Now close your eyes and see me no more...”

George wasn’t peeking. Man, he was really into this. “Okay...” he breathed, adding a quieter: “affirmative...”

Marty lunged off the bed and grabbed a bottle which Doc had supplied her with, dabbing the contents onto a rag. George didn’t even fight back – one inhale later, he was out cold.

Marty yanked the earbuds from his ears and grabbed her stuff. Climbing across the roof of the McFly house was a difficult task in a radiation suit, but soon enough, she’d plopped into the seat of Doc’s car, which was purring softly in the McFly’s driveway.

“How did it go?” Doc asked.

“Great,” Marty said, pulling off her radiation helmet, “man, that chloroform really put him out. Hope I didn’t overdo it.”

 

* * *

 

 

“DONNA! _MARTY_!”

It was a hot Thursday afternoon – outside of the diner, Marty had just paid forty cents for a can of ‘New’ Coca-Cola, and was still gaping that the vending machine had given her any change from a dollar at all. At the sound of her name, she glanced up. George was sprinting towards her, with flyaway hair and a face as red as anything.

“Marty,” he panted, skidding to a halt in front of her.

“George, buddy, you weren’t at school, what’ve you been doing all day?” she asked. It was good acting, if she said so herself.

“I overslept!” he said. Oops. “Look, I need your help! I have to ask Lorraine out, but I don’t know how to do it...”

“Okay, listen,” said Marty calmly, popping the tab on the can, “keep your pants on, she’s over in the cafe.” She took a sip: “ _God_!” she swore, “that’s disgusting! How do you drink this?”

“I don’t,” George said, “I drink Coke Classic, it’s the original one.”

“Jesus,” Marty muttered. The eighties were whacked out. “What made you change your mind, anyway?”

The two started towards the door: “last night, an alien called Megamind came down from Planet Jakku and said that he’d have to blacklist me on the X-Files if I didn’t take Lorraine.”

Marty stopped him in his tracks. “Yeah, well, uh... Let’s keep this X-Files stuff to ourselves, okay?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah!” George agreed. He looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. What a state.

“Okay,” Marty said, dragging him over to the window. Lorraine was joking with Babs, laughing and pushing her. “There she is, George. Now just go in there and invite her.”

“I don’t know what to _say_ ,” George whinged.

“Say whatever’s natural. Say the first thing that comes into your mind.”

“Nothing’s coming to my mind!”

“Jesus, George,” Marty muttered, “it’s a wonder I was even born.”

“What--?!”

“—Nothing, nothing!” she backtracked. “Look, tell her... destiny brought you together. Tell her she’s the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen in the world. Girls like that stuff... What are you doing?”

George didn’t look up from his notebook: “I’m writing this down, this is good stuff.”

“Yeah,” Marty said, tidying his hair, “okay, let’s go.”

She pushed him through the double doors – as soon as they opened, Stevie Wonder’s ‘Part Time Lover’ assaulted her ears. She shoved her father forwards a little, and took refuge at the back of the diner, waiting to see what would happen from afar.

“Lou,” George said, staring at Lorraine, “give me a milk. Chocolate.”

Lou slid it across the worktop, and George caught it perfectly, taking a huge swig. _Alright_. This was already going well.

He wandered over slowly, as though Betty and Babs would grow fangs and pounce if he got too close. Quite frankly, Betty was too preoccupied with her cigarette.

“Lorraine?”

They looked up. Marty saw that George’s knees were starting to shake. She felt almost sorry for him, but... She’d rather it was her mom on the receiving end of a date than _her_. Jeez.

“My density... has popped me to you,” said George, reading from his notebook.

“What?” asked Lorraine. Marty put her face in her hands.

“Oh,” said George, “what I meant to say was... I’m George. George McFly. And I’m your density—I mean... Your _destiny_.”

Lorraine’s expression softened, and she even let a small “aw,” escape, but to Marty’s complete lack of surprise, Biff and his gang chose that moment to invade the cafe.

“Hey, McFly!” Biff shouted.

Someone shut off the speakers. Marty made a ‘ _tch’_ sound, because honestly, what kind of tool would enforce this sort of shit?

“I thought I told you never to come in here?”

The whole diner was silent – no-one could run, with the gang being in the doorway, imposing and threatening even to those who weren’t cowering under their stare. They were watching George with morbid fascination.

“It’s gonna cost you,” said Biff. “How much money have you got on you?”

“Now Biff,” her father started, and as Biff advanced, Marty had an awful vision of the present day – her dad being cornered in their living after a car wreck, paying someone else’s bills. From her chair at the counter, she stuck a foot out into Biff’s path. He went flying – the _oooooh_ s of the diner were testament to how hard he’d fallen.

Biff stood up silently. Between then and yesterday lunchtime, Marty had forgotten how tall he actually was – she eyed up his shoulders, jittery with nerves and impulsiveness.

“Alright, punk,” he said, “now--”

“—woah, woah, Biff!” Marty said, pointing over his shoulder, “what’s that?”

His scowl was replaced by confusion as he peered behind him. The second it took was all Marty needed to get a hell of a right hook in, and Biff collapsed against the table behind him, throwing crockery everywhere.

Marty shook out her hand, and leapt for the door, but not before hearing George say “that’s Donna Karan, o-oh my gosh, she’s amazing!” Great. Just _great_.

“Hey, kid!” she yelled, approaching some boys in the square examining a skateboard, “I need to borrow this.”

“But it’s broken!” the younger one protested. It was true – one of the trucks had turned sideways, meaning the wheels faced sideways instead of forwards, and all of the bearings were loose. No problem. Marty twisted the other set of wheels to match, and tossed it to the ground.

“I’ll give it back to you,” she said.

“You broke it more!” the kid protested, by Marty had already thrown herself forwards, on a DIY self-balancing scooter. Swagway, eat your heart out.

“Wow,” said the boy, changing his mind, “look at her _go_.”

Marty looked over her shoulder, and Biff and his guys had already caught her up considerably – they sprinted across the green in the town square, but she was already getting used to how the DIY Swagway moved, and tilted her body just enough to catch the bumper of a truck passing by. Marty practically did a u-turn evading Biff, and they had to turn on their heel to catch up.

“What’s that thing she’s on?” she heard, as she passed by Lou’s Cafe again.

“It’s a skateboard – but sideways!”

She waved, exactly how she did when heading to school past the aerobics classes, and caught sight of George’s infatuated expression. _Shit!_

Even worse was that Biff and his gang had piled into his Cadillac Eldorado, and they were gained on her _fast_. They tore through the grass in the square, not giving a damn about any traffic violations they were causing, and pulled out behind the truck Marty was hitching a ride from. They nudged her calves with the front bumper – god knows what the driver of the truck was thinking – and Marty leant to the side to evade them. Which would have worked, had a parked car not opened the driver’s side door directly in her path.

She yelled, leaning as much as she could without falling over, did a complete turn on the spot when she let go of the truck, and crashed into a couple walking outside the clock tower.

“Sorry!” she shouted, and had barely enough time to put her feet back on the board when the Cadillac came towards her. It hit her straight on, and she was wheeled down the street – Biff laughed thunderously, and crowed “I’m gonna ram ‘er!”

At the end of the street was an open manure truck.

Marty thought on her feet – perhaps even _with_ her feet – and jumped onto the bonnet. Stepping would have resulted in her other foot getting lost under the car; as it was, she jumped, sprinted across the seats, and landed clean on top of the board with no problems. Leaning backwards seemed to act as a brake.

Biff and his gang watched her stop, then turned their eyes back to the road.

The manure truck was approaching them.

The only reaction they had time for was a collective cry of “ _shiiiiiiiittttt!_ ”. Biff swerved – possibly the worst thing he could have done, as they hit it sideways on – and to Marty’s absolute delight, a tirade of manure came tumbling down into the car, coating all four of its passengers.

“Thank you, D. Jones,” Marty grinned.

The cafe patrons came pouring out, anxious to see what had transpired up-close. It was _too_ close for Goldie Wilson, who brought his apron up to his nose, but everyone else seemed as thrilled as Marty was with the result. The sight of four Grade-A dicks emerging from a pile of shit was just _so satisfying_.

The two boys who had been skateboarding were at the forefront of the crowd which had gathered around Marty. She picked up the DIY Swagway and handed it back to the kid she’s borrowed it from. “Back home,” she said, clapping the little guy on the back, “they call that a hoverboard. Thanks a lot, kid.”

At the epicentre of the manure collapse, Biff spat dung-coated straw from his mouth. “I’m gonna get that bitch,” he promised, his teeth gritted.

And in front of the diner, Babs and Betty looked on: “where did she come from?” Lorraine asked.

“Yeah, where does she live?” added Betty.

George, who was as lovestruck as before, murmured to himself that he didn’t know. But he was going to find out.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, self-balancing scooters. I feel like Marty would have always wanted one, but would have never had the chance (or funds) to have tried it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING FOR SEXUAL ASSAULT. You probably knew that already if you saw the film, but it's particularly prevalent in this chapter.
> 
> In which time begins to catch up.

Thursday evening was a much calmer affair than the afternoon had been. After the manure incident, a well deserved nap had been taken, but Marty awoke with a head-splitting migraine. She’d dreamt of nothing. Not that she hadn’t dreamt – but it had been dark. Just dark. There were no memories to make sense of, and warp into a nonsensical story. There was just the black, and just the dark, in a dream about nothing at all.

She wandered into the laboratory, with the intention of asking Doc for some painkillers.

“ _My god, they found me. I don't know how, but they found me. Run for it, Marty--! ……..My god, they found me. I don't know how, but they found me. Run for it, Marty_ \--!”

“Doc...?”

“Oh, hi, Marty,” Doc said guiltily. She’d been sat in front of the television, not watching the camera footage on the screen, but on the tiny pull-out screen that came with the camera display. It was probably novel to her – how a tiny ‘television’ could fit into a video camera was something just a little ways beyond the year of nineteen eighty five. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, standing up. “...Fascinating device, this... video unit.”

She put it back on top of the TV set.

“Listen, Doc,” Marty began, her eyes stinging. “There’s something I haven’t told you about the night we made that video...”

“Please, Marty, don’t tell me – no woman should know too much about her own destiny,” she said brashly, and annoyance flared up in the younger girl’s chest. The hypocrisy was too much.

“You don’t understand,” she said.

“I do understand!” Doc retorted, “if I know too much about my own future, I could endanger my own existence! Just as _you_ endangered _yours_!”

It was like a punch to the gut.

“You’re right,” she said quietly, and clenched her jaw so that her eyes wouldn’t prickle so much.

“Now let me show you my plan for sending you home,” Doc said. She steered Marty over to a table top that held a model of the town square – it must have taken her all day to build. The devil was in the detail, and holy _hell,_ there was detail. “Please excuse the crudity of this model,” Doc was saying, “I didn’t have time to build it to scale or to paint it...”

“It’s good,” Marty said reassuringly.

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” said Doc, relieved. “Okay now. We run some industrial-strength electrical cable from the top of the clocktower-” she pointed, “down to spreading it over the street between these two lamp posts. Meanwhile,” and she lumbered over to the DeLorean, now with added metal stick, “we outfit the time vehicle with this big pole and hook, which runs _directly_ into the flux capacitor.”

She came back over to the table, and pulled a large toy car from her pocket, winding it up absent-mindedly as she crossed the room.

“At the calculated moment, you start off from down the street, driving directly towards the cable, accelerating to eighty eight miles per hour. According to the flyer, at precisely ten oh four PM this Saturday night, lightning will strike the clock tower,” she pointed, “electrifying the cable,” her finger drifted down the model wire, “just as the connecting hook makes contact, thereby sending one point twenty gigawatts into the flux capacitor, and sending you back to twenty fifteen!”

This was a lot to keep up with. Doc didn’t stop for breath. Marty watched in wonder as she said: “alright now, watch this! You wind up the car and release it – I’ll simulate the lightning.”

Marty twisted the dial until it could go no further – the Doc pulled down some ridiculous green safety goggles from atop her head. “Ready?” she asked, holding up two enormous crocodile clips.

This was just like old times. Marty didn’t say anything – just raised her eyebrows in anticipation.

One of the clips attached to the furthest lamppost on the model. The other, poised carefully over the top of the clock tower, radiated tension into the room. “Set!” Doc whispered.

Marty put the car on the starting line.

“Release!”

She let go – the little car zipped towards the wire, and Doc’s lightning _exploded_ the entire set up. Marty yelped in surprise and dodged the sparks. The car caught fire, knocking over the edge of the model and driving onto the lab floor, where it was cushioned within a pile of oily rags.

The entire heap went up in flames. Doc’s mouth formed a perfect ‘O’, and Marty would have found the frantic leap for the fire extinguisher funny, had it not been her future at stake.

“Your plan’s instilling me with a lot of confidence, Doc,” she murmured, staring at the charred rags.

“Don’t worry,” Doc said, still wielding the extinguisher nozzle, “I’ll take care of the lightning – you take care of your pop.” She kicked the pile with disdain and returned the canister to its place on the lab wall: “by the way,” she said, “what happened yesterday? Did he ask her out?”

“Uh,” Marty bluffed, “I think so.”

“What did she say?” Doc demanded.

The rapping at the garage door made both of them jump. Doc darted over to peek through the lace curtains: “quick,” she said, “it’s your dad! He’s tracked you down! Cover the time machine!”

The two of them yanked the tarp so violently over the DeLorean that it billowed in the air; Doc shambled over to the door, and let George pass wordlessly.

Her father stumbled on his words when he saw her. “Hi Mar.... Don.... Marty,” he breathed.

“Oh, uh, George,” she said, trying to fake enthusiasm, “how did you know I was here?”

“Oh, I, uh, remembered the address you gave at dinner the other night,” he shrugged, shooting glances at Doc.

“Oh, um,” she remembered, “this is my, uh, Doc...”

‘ _My Doc’_? What the hell was that?!

“Uh, my aunt!” she clarified hastily, “Doc... Brown.”

George and Doc exchanged awkward ‘hi’s.

“Marty,” George began, finally stepping away from the door – Doc eyes were wide and full of caution – “I know this mi-might seem rude, and I promise you’re not second choice, but I was wondering if you would go with me... To.... to theEnchantmentUnderTheSeaDanceonSaturday?”

Marty gaped. “You mean... nobody’s asked _you_? You didn’t ask _Lorraine_?”

“No,” he winced, “not _yet_.”

“But she likes you!” Marty pointed out, “she thinks you’re cute--!”

“But _girls_ ,” George protested. “Girls like Lorraine think a man should be... strong. So he c-can stand up for himself. And... protect the woman he loves...”

With the last statement, George had stepped steadily forwards until Marty had backed into Doc, leaning on the time machine. The back of Marty’s neck prickled. She rubbed it absently.

“But you... don’t seem to mind,” George concluded.

Marty laughed awkwardly.

Man. Her dad was such a _dick_.

 

* * *

 

 

“I still don’t understand,” said Lorraine, “how am I going to go to the dance with _him_ , if he’s already going with _you_?”

“Because, Lorraine,” Marty said, helping her carry out the Baines’ family laundry, “he _wants_ to go to the dance with you.... He just doesn’t know it yet. That’s why we gotta show him that you, Lorraine Baines, are accepting. Are _gentle_. Someone who values brain over brawn.”

“Yeah, but, I wouldn’t know what to say to him,” Lorraine said, and the two set down the basket in the back yard. “It’s no good picking brains over brawn if I haven’t got the brains to match, Marty.”

“You’re not gonna be discussing quantum physics over the punch bowl, Mom,” Marty said, hiding her expression as she realised the slip up: “Mom, m-uhh, the _mother_ of all brainy subjects... is, uh. Creativity.”

Lorraine seemed to buy it.

“Okay, so, let’s go over the plan again,” Marty said, hanging a shirt on the line. “Eight fifty five, where are you gonna be?”

“I’m gonna be at the dance,” Lorraine said.

“And where am _I_ gonna be?”

“You’re gonna be in the car, with George.”

“Right, okay,” Marty said, satisfied. “So right around nine o’clock, he’s going to get very angry with me.”

Lorraine paused. “Why is he gonna get angry with _you_?”

She swallowed heavily. “Well, _because_ , Lorraine, nice guys get angry when girls take advantage of their chivalry.”

“Oh!” Lorraine said, giggling, waving a pair of boxer shorts in the air: “you mean you’re gonna go touch him on his--”

“No, no!” Marty said, grabbing the boxers and tossing them back into the basket. “Look, it’s just an act, right?”

Lorraine nodded. She didn’t seem too fussed as to whether it _was_ an act or not, to be honest, which Marty was uncomfortable with. Parents. _Sex_. Ew.

“So, nine o’clock. You’re strolling through the parking lot. You see us struggling in the car. You walk up – you open the door, and you say...! Your line, Lorraine--”

Lorraine jumped. “Oh! Uh... Get _your stinkin’ hands off him, you damn dirty ape!_ ”. She paused, deep in thought: “I really like the swearing in that.”

“Yes, goddamnit,” Marty said, delighted, “it’s _Planet of the Apes_ , it’s iconic, it shows you know your shit.”

Lorraine pinned another shirt to the line. “So I drag you out, you run into the night, and George and I live happily ever after? You make it sound so _easy_ , Marty--”

And Marty grabbed her by the shoulders, locking their stares together. “Listen to me, Lorraine,” she said. “There’s nothing to be scared of. All it takes is a little self-confidence.”

“But what about Biff--?”

“What _about_ Biff?” asked Marty, because honestly, she was _tired_ of Biff. “For two people to work, they’ve gotta listen to each other, and compromise for each other, and love each other, and it’s gotta come from _both sides_. If you need to stand up to him, you know you can do that. Because...”

She paused, her mind jumping to Jennifer, and the afternoon they’d spent together in the square in the year twenty fifteen.

“If you put your mind to it,” Marty told her, “you can accomplish _anything_.”

 

* * *

 

 

_“This Saturday night: mostly clear, with some scattered clouds. Lows in the upper forties...”_

“Are you sure about this storm, Marty?”

Marty snorted. “Since when could the weather forecast predict the _weather_? Let alone the future.”

It was dark – the kind of darkness that only descended on autumn and winter afternoons, when the moon had surfaced at three PM and the sun was gone by four thirty. Marty would be picked up by her father soon; she was dreading it more with every passing minute.

Doc took off her coat and draped it over the park bench next to the twin lampposts. The wire had been set up earlier by both of them, and the electrical cable was hooked up to the clock tower and ready to be struck. All that was missing was the storm.

“You know, Marty,” Doc said, “I’m going to be very glad to see you go. You’ve really made a difference in my life. You’ve given me something to shoot for!”

Doc’s choice of words were awful. Unbeknownst to the scientist, Marty was cringing into her awful formal dress.

“Just knowing that I might be around to see twenty fifteen...” Doc continued, gazing at the DeLorean. “I’m gonna succeed in _this_! That I’m gonna have a chance to travel through time!”

Marty looked down at her ridiculous ruffled blue number, 30 years out of date, and felt a stab of misery hit her square in the chest. “You make other stuff that works, though, Doc,” she said. “Little things that make your life easier, y’know.”

“Yes, but... a _time machine_.” Doc loosely curled her calloused hands over the square’s park railings. “It’s going to be really hard waiting thirty years to talk you about everything that’s happened in the past few days,” she said. She turned over her shoulder to address her properly: “I’m really gonna miss you, Marty.”

It was an effort to keep her voice from wavering, but she managed to reply. “…I’m really gonna miss _you_.”

Marty wandered over to the railing, the back of her fingers aching from fidgeting and putting them under her arms so much. Trying to relax, she stood next to Doc, and gripped the railing so tightly her knuckles turned white.

“I got you something.”

“-What?”

“A going away present, of sorts,” Doc said. “You said over breakfast the other day that you’d always wanted one, so I thought you could have… a souvenir.”

“Doc,” Marty said, unsure if she should first address the act of friendship, or the hypocrisy, or the touching gesture, and finally settling on none, because they all got stuck in her throat on the way out of her mouth. She was handed a slim box. Inside the box was brown paper. And inside the brown paper:

“…You actually listened to that?”

It was a red tux, a proper 80s piece, with wide lapels and a shirt with minimal frills and dress trousers. “Of course I did,” grinned the inventor, looking positively mad, “it’s hard to forget the way you told me about it. _‘I’ve always wanted one, they’re awful’_? Imagine wanting something because it was bad! You future kids and your backwards ways. Who knows if I’ll get the hang of that in time.”

Marty bit her bottom lip until she tasted iron, and put the box under her arm. Moving her free hand to tug on the other’s sleeve, and giving up entirely on trying to be presentable in public, the girl buried her head into the upper arm of Doc’s sweater, because she wasn’t tall enough to reach the shoulder.

Doc rested her chin on Marty’s head.

The only sound was the wind, upsetting the frills on the dress; and they stayed like that for several seconds.

The lump in her throat hurt, exceptionally so, as it was kept at bay. “Doc,” she finally mumbled, desperation creeping into her tone, “about the future--”

“No!” Doc said firmly, and time shuddered for a second, as though _she_ had been struck by lightning. “ _Marty_! We’ve already agreed that having about the future could be extremely dangerous. Even if your intentions are _good_ , they could backfire drastically!” She ignored, or didn’t notice, how Marty had stumbled away, how she was concentrating hard on the concrete: “whatever you’ve got to tell me, I’ll find out through the natural course of time!”

From out of nowhere, she was struck by the last time she’d opposed an authority figure: _yeah, well, history is gonna change._

Marty stormed into Lou’s Cafe.

“Dear Doctor Brown,” she wrote, shakily, reading it aloud to avoid making any mistakes. “On the night that I go back in time, you will be shot by terrorists. Please take whatever precautions are necessary to prevent this terrible disaster. Your friend... Marty.”

She signed it, folded the paper, and sealed the envelope. Instead of writing an address, she simply scrawled: _Do not open until 2015_.

When she went back outside to slip the envelope into Doc’s coat, a policeman was talking up to Doc, who was on top of a ladder securing the lamppost wires.

“Good evening, Doctor Brown,” he said tartly, “what’s with the wire?”

Doc smiled. “Oh, just... a little weather experiment.”

The police officer poked the tarp that the DeLorean was concealed under. “Whatcha got under there--?” he asked, and Doc motioned frantically.

“No, no, _don’t touch that_!” she warned, “that’s some new specialised weather sensing equipment!”

The officer raised his eyebrows. “You got a permit for that?”

“Of course I do,” Doc said, descending the ladder, “just let me see if I can find it. It should be here in my bag...”

Marty crept over and tucked the letter into the pocket of Doc’s discarded coat, as the scientist slipped the police officer a crisp hundred.

“You’re not gonna set anything on fire this time, are ya, lady?” he said, accepting the bribe. He clearly had some issues to work through regarding women in STEM fields.

Doc waited a little too long to say ‘nahhhh!’ cheerfully, but it seemed to satisfy the officer, and he wandered away across the square. She immediately broke through the jolly façade. “You’d better get going, kid, your dad is going to be picking you up very shortly,” she hissed.

Bile rose in Marty’s mouth. “Yeah, right,” she muttered, smoothing down the front of her dress.

“You look a little pale – are you okay?”

Marty would usually answer that key phrase with an agitated _fine! fine_ , but the genuine concern injected into Doc’s statement made her stumble. “I…. I don’t _know_ , Doc,” she said honestly, “it’s just this whole thing with my father! I just don’t know if I can go through with it... Y’know. _Creeping_ on him.”

“Nobody said anything about _scaring_ him,” said Doc, completely misunderstanding, “you just gotta take a few liberties with him!”

“See, that’s what I mean!” cried Marty, “ _God_. I can’t believe I’m going to touch up my own dad. This is the kind of thing that could screw me up. Permanently.”

A sudden brainwave hit her; it was the kind of spontaneity that could get one stuck in the quicksand of drama, as the more you tried to dig yourself out, the worse the situation became. On the other hand, it could have been Marty’s gut telling her – _it’s now or never. It’s the timing you’ve been waiting for._

“What if I go back to the future and I end up… being gay?” she said with trepidation.

Doc smiled manically: “why _shouldn’t_ you be happy?”

Had she understood the word properly? The Doc was notoriously bad with colloquialisms, you only had to look at the way she described a _dance_. If she had, was it a blessing? If she hadn’t, would it be much harder now for herself and Jennifer to come out in the present?

But it was too ambiguous, and she was beginning to develop a pounding headache, so she dropped it entirely. “I gotta go wait for my dad,” she sighed.

“Good,” said Doc, satisfied, and began to walk Marty across the square.

Before she left, Marty had just _one_ more question. She pulled the photo of her and her siblings from out of her bra, because there was nowhere else in her horrible dress to stash it. “Listen,” she said, “if things don’t work out at the dance, and my folks don’t get back together… When do you think I’ll start to fade out?”

And Doc Brown smiled, in all of her infinite scientific wisdom, with all of the nuances and precision of the twentieth century genius, and said: “it beats the shit outta me.”

 

* * *

 

 

The ride to the high school was silent. George’s car radio was tuned into what Marty would have recognised as the Classix station – instead, it was a station playing current hits, one of which was ‘Time Bomb Town’.

“Do you mind if we... park?” she asked, when he’d pulled up into a space.

George’s eyes narrowed. “Wha-what do you mean by that?”

“Uh,” said Marty intelligently, “just sit here for a little bit. Before we go inside.”

“Oh,” said George, “sure.”

“Right. Right... Good.”

She smoothed her dress; rubbed the back of her neck; scrunched her feet up in her flats and stretched them out again.

“Marty, is something wrong? You seem so nervous,” George said.

Marty discreetly checked her watch – it was eight fifty PM. Lorraine would be inside right now, waiting with Babs and Betty for her chance to grab a date with George. “No.... no.”

Out of the corner of her eye, in the awkward non-conversation, she spotted George opening the glove compartment. He grabbed a bottle of some sort of strong spirit, and took rather a large swig.

All awkwardness flew out of the window, replaced by the anger of… something which might never happen at all. The inevitability of alcoholism in the McFly house. “George, what are you doin’?!” Marty demanded, snatching it from him.

“I swiped it from my Ma’s liquor cabinet,” he said proudly, “to share with the girl I took to the dance.”

“Yeah, well,” Marty said, thinking of her mother’s dinnertime vodka and lemon, “not all girls _like_ to drink.”

“Why not?” George asked.

“Well... they might regret it. Later in life,” Marty clarified.

George stared at her. “Marty,” he said, “everybody drinks. And s-smokes. Even Lorraine.”

“Jesus, Lorraine _smokes_?” Marty said. Man, this was too much.

She took a swig of her own.

Inside, she heard the band finish up for their interval – Lorraine would be coming out at any minute now. Marty’s foot began to tap on the passenger side floor in anticipation. Was it hot in the car all of a sudden?

“Marty,” George said, “why are y-you so nervous?”

Marty straightened out the bust of her dress, and rolled her eyes as she did it. This was such a bad situation to be in.

“George,” she said, her voice a surprisingly high register, “have you ever, uh, been in a situation where you know you had to act a certain way, but when you got there... You didn't know if you could go through with it...?”

“Like... how you’re supposed to act on a date?” George whispered.

“Weeeell, sort of,” squeaked Marty.

“I think I know exactly what you mean,” said George.

“You do...?”

“You know what... _advice..._ I’d wanna follow?” George said. Uh oh. “I’d wanna do whatever’s... natural. The first thing that comes into my mind.”

Oh no.

Oh, _nooooooooo._

George leant over and kissed her; Marty tried backing away, but was stopped by the passenger door still being closed, and also by George’s weight on top of her. She made some high pitched anxiety noises, totally helpless – her mind was running a loop of _ugh ugh wrong God ugh_ , over and over again.

To her immense gratitude, to whatever higher powers there may have been, it lasted only a couple of seconds. George backed off, horror written all over his features. “I don’t know what it is,” he said slowly, “It’s all.... wrong...”

 _YES,_ Marty’s thoughts shrieked, tumbling over themselves. _THIS IS THE MOST WRONG THING I HAVE EVER BEEN A PART OF._

“When I kiss you, it feels _wrong_ ,” George continued, “like I’m kissing… my _sister_? I guess that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Believe me,” Marty said, relief washing over her like a bucket of cold water. “It makes _perfect_ sense.”

“Really?” George said, and he suddenly looked older, _much_ older. For the second time in the space of an hour, Marty accidentally blurted out the first thing that came into her mind.

“I’m gay,” she said.

Again; answering the nudge, the call, of spontaneity was something that could get her into serious trouble. Her first thought was _oops_ , and her second was _at least maybe I won’t be around to see the fallout._

“...Oh,” said George.

And then, “I... that, uh, explains it, then?”

“I guess,” said Marty. She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, and tried to stop her hands from trembling.

“Why’d you let me do all that stuff?”

“I,” Marty said, speaking to a George McFly who wouldn’t exist for another thirty years: “I didn’t want to disappoint you. You’re not mad?”

“For what?” George said incredulously. He looked unnerved, but not _angry_. “I mean... I’ve, I’ve never met a gay person before. But you’ve been, you’ve been nothing but nice.”

Huh.

 “Someone’s coming,” George added.

Marty sat back and waiting for the catfight she was supposed to be having with Lorraine, which would hopefully be easier than the strange twist of events that had just transpired; it came as a rude and unwelcome shock to be yanked out of the car by her forearm, and to be pushed back against it with more force than she could fight.

Biff.

“You cost eleven hundred bucks damage to my car, you little bitch,” he said, looming over her. “ _And I’m gonna take it out of your ass._ ”

Marty had no doubt about that.

She was thrown backwards into the waiting hands of Biff’s gang – and then George got out of the car, as if there was a meaningful contribution he could put towards the fight. To make matters a hundred times worse, Lorraine came running out into the parking lot, dressed in a strapless gown which showed off her _assets_ effectively.

“Let her go, Biff,” she shouted, “you’re drunk!”

While it was _amazing_ to see her mother, descending in elegant formal dress with the maternal fury not of an adult, but of an older sister, it was, tactically, a terrible decision.

“Well, _looky_ what we have here,” Biff sneered.

Marty inhaled sharply.

He lunged for her, and Lorraine tried to make a break for it, but buckled in her heels: “no, no, no, you’re staying with _me_!”

“Stop it!” Lorraine yelled, as he pushed her into the car.

George stood, watching in horror. As ever, Marty was reminded of home at an inopportune time;  _you’re about as much use as the ‘g’ in ‘lasagna’_ , her mother would always say, especially when they were younger and had half-assed their chores. This was no time to be half-assing things.

“Leave her alone, you _bastard_!” Marty spat.

It made zero difference. “Take her in back, I’ll be right there,” Biff said, still manhandling Lorraine: “well, go on, get outta here! This ain’t no peep show!”

The last thing Marty caught a glimpse of before she was hustled into the night was her father, like a deer caught in the headlights, unsure as to whether he should choose ‘fight’ or ‘flight’. Following that, the tallest of the trio punched her in the stomach. They carried her around the back of the school; she was too busy trying not to throw up to notice was happened after that.

“Here’s good,” said the one with the stupid 3-D glasses, prompting noises of agreement. Marty was dragged up along the rear wall of the high school, with thick pillars casting shadows over them; it was perfectly concealed during the night. No-one would think of coming around the back to find her. She made noises of terror, muffled protests, behind the hand of the guy with the match between his teeth.

They slammed her against the trunk of a car parked out back. Her elbows stung, and the backs of her knees buckled; the three held her upright at all sides. “This is for messing up my hair,” leered the one with the buzzcut. Punctuating his words by pulling a stick with a razor attached from his sleeve, Marty’s eyes widened as she caught it glinting in the moonlight. He wielded the shiv like a torture instrument, elegantly and frighteningly, and decided that slicing a line down the godawful dress would be suitable punishment.

Marty shivered. Closing her eyes; shaking like a leaf; trying not to make a sound. When Match moved his hands up her body, she bit down on her tongue so hard that she drew blood.

“What the _hell_ are you doing to my car?!” bellowed someone from the bonnet side of the vehicle.

3-D curled his lip, addressing whoever it was that was out of Marty’s line of sight. “Hey, beat it, e _ggplant_ , this don’t concern you!”

She couldn’t see, couldn’t even call for help with the blade at her collar and the hand at her mouth, but she could _hear_ , and what she heard was several sets of footsteps.

“Who you callin’ _eggplant_ , white cracker?”

The voice was domineering; gentle, but laced with dangerous authority. Like a challenge. How many others _were_ there? Because Biff’s friends were flinching, suddenly taken aback by the mere presence of the group.

Skinhead backed up, hiding the shiv behind his back discreetly. The only reason Marty spotted it disappear from sight was because she hadn’t taken her eyes off of it the whole time. “Hey, listen, guys,” he said, trying not to stammer, “we don’t wanna fight no War On Drugs--”

And it hit her – a plume of pungent smoke smacked clean into her senses as the group drew closer. Honestly, Marty had never been so happy to smell weed, and for crying out loud, she hung around with all sorts of art major types.

“This don’t concern you!” Skinhead repeated. He spoke in the tones of a man who was desperate, and full of rage, and mad glee; to her horror, he brandished the shiv at arm’s length, just out of her sight. She didn’t dare turn her head.

“Now come on, son… You don’t really want to be--”

A cry of pain; the sound of Skinhead’s nose crunching as he was punched in the face; the sudden movement from every direction. In her peripheral vision, she saw visions of tall, blue-clad figures surround the trunk of the car from all sides. “Go home to your mamas,” said the man who had spoken before, adding a puff of smoke for good measure – and, like magic, Biff’s gang scattered into the night. Skinhead, his little blade forgotten in the parking lot, spat blood and scrambled after the others.

She sat up.

“Thanks,” she choked out.

“No problem,” winced the man, applying pressure to his hand.

Oh, god. Oh, goddamnit, she _kinda_ had to be somewhere. Like…. right now.

“Shit,” she said, “ _shit_ , I’m sorry, guys,” and gestured to all six of her blue-clad saviours, “I promise I’ll be back to say thanks properly, but there’s something worse happening and I—I gotta go--”

Marty was already jogging backwards as she blurted it out to the bewildered group. This was no time for manners, unfortunately; she turned and sprinted properly back to the parking lot. As she ran, she felt the bruising developing around her stomach, and the wind against her exposed shoulder where the dress had been torn, and a little bit of wetness at her jaw, and as she touched it to investigate it, it stung and came back crimson on her fingers, and

for just a fraction of a second

Marty appreciated it. 

It meant that she was still alive.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which extremes occur (time-wise, romance-wise, performance-wise).

Her feet stung - the parking lot seemed to meet her flats in the middle, rushing by like precious seconds as she ran. Marty’s bra was partially on display. Despite trying to hold the broken shoulder of the dress in place as she hurtled towards George’s car, she must have still looked a sight to rush up to the open lot with her hand concealing her underwear, her jaw dribbling blood, wide-eyed and still alert with terror.

Her feet stopped before her mind told them to.

What she took in, as she clumsily rounded the corner, was George cracking Biff square in the face.

It was vivid and bright, like a jumpscare; Marty’s mother telling her about how the two had gotten together, over homemade dinner. Mashed potato? Peanut brittle? No, it was different. Lorraine had made pie, with proper vegetables and gravy. Nothing had come from a can. Everyone looked younger, and they were eating proper food, and Marty’s brain seared with pain:

_“Don’t worry about him, honey,” she was saying, patting Linda on that hand, “these things happen eventually. Like the way I met your father.”_

_Dave sat up gleefully. “How you KOed him in one hit, Dad?”_

_“Now, I don’t condone violence, but… It was meant to be,” George chuckled._

_“If your father hadn’t hit him, then none of you would have been born.” Lorraine poured herself some water. “Our Biff Tannen was getting a little too handsy, and I reached out to your father, and he swooped in to save me… My heart just went out to him.”_

_“Yeah, Mom, you said you were so grateful that you took him to the Fish Under The Sea Dance--”_

_“The_ Enchantment _Under the Sea Dance, dear... And that was how I got into trouble in the first place. I headed out of the dance to see if I could ask him to join me… I’d always been intrigued by… his creative writing…”_

She blinked hard, and shook her head. The scene (vision? _past_?) swum out of view, and was replaced by the three key figures of the evening. George McFly, his hands tensing and relaxing slightly; Lorraine Baines, her face the picture of surprise, but her chin held high defiantly; Biff Tannen, out cold on the asphalt.

“Jesus Christ,” said Marty. “What the hell happened?”

She lightly jogged back over to them. A crowd was beginning to form. Lorraine suddenly struck a hand out and grabbed the arm of George’s jacket: “I asked him to help me and… he did,” she said, breathless.

George nodded at her. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” Lorraine cackled shakily. She didn’t sound like she found anything particularly funny. “Marty, what happened to _you_?!”

“You should see the other guys,” she deadpanned.

There was a chorus of “ _Lorraine_!!” as Babs and Betty swished over, ruffles rustling in only the way taffeta from the twentieth century could. Betty had a cigarette hanging from her mouth, and almost dropped it in surprise as she took in the unconscious form of Biff Tannen. “God, I thought you were gonna ask George to the dance, not start a fight!”

“Yeah, George,” grinned Babs, “I thought the pen was mightier than the sword?”

George’s ears turned red, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Guess I won’t be blacklisted on the X-Files after all,” he murmured.

“Guess not,” Marty agreed.

Babs and Betty were fussing over Lorraine; George took his chance to lower his voice and address her former ‘date’. “Marty, I’m… I’m _sorry_ about the way I’ve been acting towards you. I hope you don’t think of me the same way you see Biff.”

Marty shrugged. “Ah, it could stand to use a little work. But apology accepted.”

“You’re bleeding,” said Babs suddenly, turning her attention from her friend to the other girl. “And your _dress_! Oh, Marty, are you gonna have to leave?”

With a smirk, she remembered the thin box she’d stashed in George’s car. “Nah,” Marty said. “I got something else.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Hey guys,” she said, returning to the car on which she’d been attacked on moments ago, “you gotta get in there and finish the dance.”

It turned out it was the band who had saved her; Tom Favor and The Good Graces. Apparently their agent was there as well, but he wasn’t the authority who had lead the charge; the lead singer looked up. “I can’t play with my hand like this,” he said, holding up a bandage on his left.

“And we can’t play without Tom,” said, assumedly, the manager. He was the only one who wasn’t in one of those beautiful baby blue tuxedos.

_“Your father kissed me for the very first time on that dance floor…”_

Worry thrummed at the back of her throat. “Look,” Marty said, “Tom, you gotta play. See that's where they kiss for the first time on the dance floor. And if there's no music, they can't dance, and if they can't dance, they can't kiss, and if they can't kiss, _they can't fall in love_ and I'm history. I just told them to go have a good time because they’re ‘crazy kids’! They _need_ you.”

“Hey man,” said Tom, “the dance is over. Unless you know someone else who could play the guitar.”

And that was how Marty found herself on stage, in totally new costume, handling a beautiful (and probably very expensive) Gibson, and trying to keep up with a band from another time.

Down on the dance floor, she caught the eyes of Lorraine, George, Betty, and Babs; they waved, and Babs directed a wink and a thumbs up at the tux Doc had given her. Marty was a vision in scarlet, with a cummerbund and a proper bow tie to match.

She felt _incredible_.

“This one is for all you lovers out there,” Tom smiled, leaning into the mic gently, and Marty glanced at the set list. ‘[How ‘Bout Us](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBUqDr14DEw)’? Yeah, why not. It had some cute little riffs in there she could do. Propping the photo of her siblings (who were both now worryingly absent, leaving only Marty in the garden scene) into the tuning pegs, she started to play, and tried to keep an eye on her parents. The band started up their harmonies.

_“No sense in draggin' on past our needs…”_

Ma and Pa were slow dancing, at least. Good start.

Lorraine was smiling; she seemed to be talking about George’s writing. Marty picked up the words ‘character’ and ‘for me’, and George turned red.

 _“Some people can hold it together_  
_Last through all kinds of weather_  
_Can we?_ ”

C’mon, guys.

To her horror, some other girl cut in, elbowing Lorraine away; was it the news about Biff which had spread? George looked over his shoulder as the girl danced him away from his partner, too polite to say anything, and a sharp stab of pins and needles began to race through her fingers. As though her hands were reflecting Lorraine’s crushed expression, Marty suddenly realised that she’d forgotten to play the guitar.

Beginning to sweat, she sat down on the amp.

“Hey, babe,” said one of the Good Graces, hunching over his piano to address her, “you okay?”

“I can’t play,” Marty gasped.

The girl who had cut in looked far too smug with herself. Marty looked up at the photo in the head of the guitar – her image was fading out, beginning to become unstable with translucency.

“George,” Lorraine whispered.

He’d learnt how to disagree on someone else’s behalf, but whether he’d learnt to do it for himself was another matter entirely. And, unfortunately, it was starting to look like another one of the McFly family’s failings.

Was it pins and needles? It was the closest sensation she could compare it to. As though the very particles of her being were flickering out of the existential plane they inhabited, the nerve endings in her hands were simultaneously numb and on fire. She used all the strength she could muster to bring her strumming hand to her face.

There it wasn’t. She could see through herself, like her skin had transformed into finely spun silk. Everyone had begun to ignore her stage presence now; the dance was continuing without her. She wasn’t going to be born. No Dave or Linda. No Jennifer to possibly ask out one day, under the stars on a camping trip. No dangerous, thrilling experiments with Doc Brown.

Marty was dying in reverse.

And it _hurt_.

“George,” she whispered hoarsely.

As Tom Favor repeated the lines _how ‘bout us, baby?_ , Marty tried to steal one last look at her mother and father. Lorraine was dithering awkwardly, as teenagers do when they’re separated, by some lonely ocean decor. Her father seemed to nod his head at his new dancing partner. Marty was sure that it was all over.

And, as clear as day, she heard his voice cut through the fog of unreality: “it’s very kind of you, but… no, thank you.” With that, he released the girl’s hands, with a paternal firmness Marty had never seen in him before…

And floated back over to Lorraine, brushing the hair from her eyes and ever-so-slowly leaning down, and then finally—finally—

_“Are we gonna make it, girl?  
Or are we gonna drift and drift and drift together again--”_

\--kissing her.

_“OOOOOH, LOVE!”_

Marty sprung to her feet with a renewed energy. The stale air of a school gym had never been so sweet, and it rushed into her lungs like a vacuum unsealed. Her hands were manipulating the guitar to her will before she’d even realised she had a hand back. Best of all was - from her left - the slight movement of Tom Favor’s head. He’d noticed her stand back up. She existed! She was _real_!

And, oh, the _photo_ – her siblings leaked back into existence, filling the awkward family photo with lazy fashion and picturesque smiles.

Maybe, like Tom was singing, some people really _were_ made for each other. From the centre of the dance floor, Lorraine looked up from where she’d rested her head upon George’s shoulder, and winked at Marty. Then, as the couple spun slowly, George came into view and saluted her. Marty hadn’t ever found so much joy in _saluting_ someone before, but the opportunity to wiggle her fingers effortlessly once more was promptly seized.

The couple dancing began to slow. Applause rose up from the students on the floor below, whether they’d been dancing or not; Tom and his band looked very pleased with themselves. In fact, no-one seemed to have noticed Marty’s lapse in talent, or missing limbs, whatsoever. She touched the band-aid on her jawline from where the band had patched her up, eager to feel the pain. The irritated sting was dizzying.

Satisfied that the future was safe, she put down the guitar and started to exit the stage; Tom grabbed her attention. “Yeah, man, that was good,” he said, “let’s do another one!”

“Ah, I… I gotta go,” said Marty reluctantly.

The crowd was cheering now. It was more than applause – it was appreciation.

“Come on, honey,” he grinned, “let’s do something _iconic_.”

Marty raised her eyebrows.

‘Iconic’ was a tempting genre.

Tom waved her towards the mic, and that was all it took.

“Okay, okay,” she said – one song couldn’t hurt. “This is an oldie, but a,” and then stopped, because it might not have even been penned yet – “well, it’s an oldie where I come from.”

Marty turned to the band and did her best to explain the song’s format. “Okay,” she started, “it’s a four chord sequence in G, starting in E minor, watch me for the changes, and _don’t_ go too fast.” With a flourish, she adjusted the levels of the mics and amps to suit the style, and grinned at the bass player. She’d need a hell of a crunchy bassline for this one.

The Good Graces seemed to really get into it as she set the tempo, delivering the chord sequence which popped up at every party she’d been too young to be drinking at. The intro rose into a crescendo, providing the perfect set up for:

“[ _Tommy used to work on the docks_!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDK9QqIzhwk)” she yelled, doing her best gravelly Bon Jovi impression, and the crowd, satisfied, began to rock to the music.

It was exhilarating to finally be able to play on stage, to a proper audience, who were _actually enjoying what she was creating_. Picking out her parents, who had moved closer to the front of the school stage, she caught threads of conversations other students were directing –

“Hey, George! Heard you laid out Biff, nice going!”

“George! Have you ever thought of writing for the school paper?”

Marty couldn’t keep the smile off her lips. Up there on the stage, with everyone cheering and screaming, she felt powerful. The wide stance she took as she messily slammed down chords was grounding. She laid her head upon Tom’s shoulder as they sang the chorus, just like in the music video – the world felt black and white at that moment, that was for sure.

Behind the scenes over stage right, the agent of the band – the one in the suit which didn’t match – was shouting into a huge mobile cell phone. It looked like it could be one of the original bricks. “John,” he was bellowing, “John, it’s Simon! You know, your cousin! Simon Bongiovi! You know that new sound you’ve been looking for?” He thrust the phone towards the stage: “well, listen to _this_!”

Marty laughed delightedly, propping one of her legs up on the enormous guitar amp and playing how Little Richard played piano – grinding her hips, baring all of her teeth. She belted out the verses with all the might she’d ever pent up within her. It was the performance of a _lifetime_. (Maybe not _her_ lifetime, but it didn’t matter in the slightest.) By the time she’d gotten to the second chorus, everyone was beginning to pick up the words, and the band had worked out some basic harmonies; the world was flooding with glorious, rhythmic technicolor all around her.

_“Take my hand, and we’ll make it, I swear!  
Woah-oh! Livin’ on a prayer--!”_

The solo came around, and despite the lack of harnesses to allow her to fly around the room… it kind of felt like she was doing that anyway. Marty slid into an Usher-style glide, doing a complete turn whilst still plucking out the tab, and when the solo reached its climax? She managed to pull off an Yngwie Malmsteen guitar spin, throwing it over her shoulder and letting it land straight back in her hands.

It was a god-like, rock ballad euphoria which crashed into her when she raised her hand to indicate the key change. The crowd screeched when she returned to the mic.

In fact, the final chorus went off without a hitch. It was the lapse into a more… heavy metal style which left everyone a little confused.

Marty lost herself in the moment a little _too_ much – banging out augmented and clashing chords, paired with the band trying to figure out what was happening, resulted in a wonderfully busy atonal mess. At least, to her ears. When she finally looked up, playing her final note in the solo, all of the students had slowed their dancing down to stare. Even the band looked bewildered.

Oops.

She cringed. “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet,” she said into the mic. “But… your kids are gonna love it.”

She handed Tom’s guitar back to him. He held it with extreme caution and suspicion, as though the spirit of teenage garage metal could leap out if he wasn’t careful.

The cherry on the cake, which saved the end of the performance as ‘positive’ in her memory, was the sight of Strickland. His hands were clamped over his ears. He had the vilest scowl etched into his features, as though Marty had offended his very biology with her magnificent noise.

So Marty winked at him.

_How’d you like my out-of-date volume now, dance auditions?_

Quickly exiting stage and nipping through the stairwell of the fire exit, she ran into her parents. It would be for the last time in thirty years.

“Lorraine!”

“Hi Marty,” she said, “that was, um, very interesting music! And I know you don’t mind, but… I thought I’d tell you that George is going to take me home tonight.”

Marty beamed. “ _Lorraine_! I had a feeling about you two,” she said, punching her lightly on the arm.

“I have a feeling too,” she giggled.

George wandered over from the other side of the gym door. He draped his suit jacket over Lorraine’s shoulders – it was the perfect time to address the both of them. “Look, I gotta go,” Marty said, pointing at the door, “but it’s nice to be able to tell you it was… _educational_.”

The disappointment was evident. “Will we ever see you again?”

Marty looked her mother in the eye, and felt her own twinkling. “I guarantee it,” she promised.

“I wanna thank you for all your good advice,” said George, “I’ll never forget it.”

He held out his hand. Marty looked down in surprise. “Well… Good luck, you guys,” she said, firmly shaking it.

She headed down the steps, but was stopped by Lorraine’s joking call of “thanks for letting me steal your man!”

“I don’t have a man,” snorted Marty, turning around; she shrugged, utilising her entire arm span. “I’m gay,”

There was a flash of surprise: “you’re _gay_?”

“As gay as the lead singer of _Wham!_ ,” she confirmed. “Just look at the tux, for crying out loud.” It was hard not to laugh when George already knew, because the expressions of her mother and father in that particular instant were so contrasting.

“ _George Michael’s gay?!_ ” said Lorraine incredulously.

Oh, right. He wouldn’t come out ‘til the turn of the century.

“Peace,” she blurted out, before she could do any more damage, and headed out to the parking lot to meet Doc.  As she opened the fire exit, wading into the brisk October night, she took a second to commit the image to her brain; George McFly and Lorraine Baines, and their height difference, and the adoration in their eyes and high school touches.

She’d helped to create it, or, really, to _re_ -create it. For just a few moments, she almost forgot to be worried about how she was getting home.


End file.
